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Tour de France 2010 - Who gets the Wild Cards?

(Admission: Frinking did all the work for this and posted it in the Cadel Evans leaves *Lotto thread but I'm sticking it up as a seperate thread because I'm sure I'll want to find it again in the future)

The GT organisers are going to have a tough time dishing out Wild Cards next year because there are an awful lot of teams who believe that they should be there by right. So lets start from the top. As part of the deal that concluded the squabble between the UCI and the GT organisers a couple of years back, all the then ProTour teams were guaranteed entry to the GTs in 2009 and 2010. Those teams are:

1 AG2R-La Mondiale,
2 Astana,
3 Bouygues Télécom, (Now Bbox, no longer PT)
4 Caisse d’Epargne,
5 Cofidis, (no longer PT)
6 Euskaltel-Euskadi,
7 Française des Jeux,
8 High Road (later Team Columbia),
9 Lampre,
10 Liquigas,
11 Silence-Lotto, (Now Omega-Pharma-Lotto)
12 Quick·Step,
13 Rabobank,
14 Saunier Duval-Scott, (Now Footon-Servetto)
15 Team CSC (Now Saxo),
16 Team Milram,
17 Crédit Agricole,
18 Team Gerolsteiner,

Two of those teams, Credit Agricole and Gerolsteiner are now defunct but the other 16 have guaranteed entry. They might just be persuaded (bribed?) not to ride the Giro and Vuelta, but I'd guess that ASO are stuck with them for the Tour.

Next there are two new, but established ProTour teams:

17 Garmin-Slipstream
18 Team Katyusha

Then two brand new ProTour teams:

19 Radio Shack
20 Sky

Then we move on to the Pro-Conti teams. Two are pushing for contention because they have serious contenders on board, viz. Sastre, Thor and Cadel:

21 Cervelo Test Team
22 BMC

Then we have the Dutch contingent, at least one of which is likely to be on the start line in Rotterdam. I suspect that ASO would have liked to see both. Kenny Van Hummel's fight to beat the time cut was one of the great stories to come from this year's Tour and we'd all like to see him back. But do you put that ahead of the Feillu brothers?

23 Vacansoleil
24 Skil Shimano

And so far there are only three French teams against a possible four US ones. So the final possible team is the Breton squad that includes French stars Jimmy Caspar, Jerome Coppel and Jonathan Hivert:

25 Saur-Sojasun (this year's Besson Chaussures)

So who gets stiffed? I'm guessing that Sky could well lose out, even though they claim to have a place all but guaranteed. Katyusha could also be at risk. And does Cadel in rainbow really guarantee a place? Chances are that there are all sorts of behind the scenes deals going on right now, and that things eventually get decided on who sponsors the most minor jersies in lesser races in the ASO stable. It still looks like a tough call.