Diego Ulissi will leave UAE Team Emirates at the end of this season to ride for Astana Qazaqstan Team starting next year. Joining the other high-profile signings at Astana such as the likes of Alberto Bettiol and Wout Poels, it's clear the Kazakh team meant business when they declared their ambition to save a WorldTour license. Though it might still be a bit late now.
The Italian is the only active cyclist to have won at least one stage every year since 2010 and had been with Tadej Pogacar's team since the 2017 season. The information has been confirmed by the colleagues of the Gazzetta dello Sport.
Thus, the Kazakhs continue to move and now come with a veteran (35 years old) who this year has shown that perhaps he is not for a team as powerful as UAE but has again demonstrated his class by winning in Austria.
Despite not being the rider for biggest races, Ulissi still retains his class and consistency at the smaller stage races and one-day races, having already accumulated well over 1000 UCI points this year. His most recent big result was the second overall at the Tour de Pologne, where he finished 2nd in two stages as well, losing only to the phenomenal Thibau Nys. And it's exactly this consistency in scoring large amounts of points that Astana strives for in their fight to, at the very least, secure an automatic wildcard for 2026 races.
Over his career, Ulissi had won 8 stages at the Giro d'Italia, the last of them in 2020. He has also won classics such as GP Montreal, Giro dell'Emilia or Milano-Torino and general classifications at Tours of Slovenia, Luxembourg, Czech Republic or Coppi e Bartali. Tireless climber with great acceleration that has made him triumph in the sport for more then a decade now.
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