The official rosters for the Tour de France 2026 continue to be announced, a race that will start this Saturday from Barcelona with an anticipated team time trial of 19.4 kilometers. The XDS Astana team of Alexandr Vinokourov will obviously take part as a World Tour formation, and after an excellent showing at the Giro d'Italia, will attempt to shine and achieve outstanding results on the roads of France.

To succeed in this endeavor, the Kazakh team will field the Colombian duo Harold Tejada-Sergio Higuita (both solid elements capable of competing for the general classification), an experienced rider like Mike Teunissen already capable in his career of both winning a stage (the Brussels stage in 2019) and wearing the yellow jersey, but also three riders making their absolute debut at the Grande Boucle: Aaron Gate (making his France debut at 35 years old), the newly crowned Kazakh road champion Nicolas Vinokurov, and a sprinter decidedly in form like Max Kanter.

Completing the selection in the light blue jersey will be two Italian riders with already some experience on the Tour stage such as Simone Velasco (at his first Grand Tour of the season) and Davide Ballerini, called upon for a double commitment after the efforts of the last Giro Rosa, which ended prematurely with his withdrawal on the eleventh stage, seven days after his memorable triumph in the Naples stage.

With these men, XDS Astana will attempt to improve the score registered at last year's Tour when, despite flirting on several occasions with the dream of a stage victory (best result being the second place obtained precisely by Ballerini on the Champs-Élysées on the day of Wout van Aert's overwhelming victory), the Asian representative ended up achieving eight top-ten finishes and 14th place in the general classification with Sergio Higuita.