Tashkent on Tour - The Uzbek team at the Tour de France Femmes 2024
Tashkent City Women's PCT are making history as the first team from Uzbekistan at the Tour de France. Global Peloton spoke to the team's coach to find out more about them
Throughout the first half of the 1990s, one man from Uzbekistan ruled the sprints at the men’s Tour de France. Known as the Tashkent Terror, Djamolidine Abdoujaparov won three green jerseys, nine Tour de France stages and seven more at the Vuelta.
Since then, cycling headlines have been sparse for the nation nestled in the centre of Central Asia. But that is all changing.
On Monday, as the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift rolls out of Rotterdam, the peloton will have among its number Tashkent City Women PCT, Uzbekistan’s first team to make it to the Tour de France - Femmes or Hommes.
Tashkent made their way to the biggest race in the world thanks to the UCI’s wildcard system. In 2023, they finished 17th on the UCI team ranking, meaning that they qualified for all Women’s WorldTour races for this season. The system received criticism as Tashkent had gathered their points from smaller races, national and continental championships. I wrote about this for Cyclingnews last year.
Read more: The surprise wildcard - Uzbekistan team in running for 2024 Tour de France Femmes (Cyclingnews)
Tashkent decided not to ride every WorldTour race this season, even though they were eligible. Instead they have focused on a few races that fit around their additional commitments to the track as they attempted to qualify riders for the Olympic Games in Paris.
The team operates on a very limited budget, assigned to them by the Uzbekistan Cycling Federation, who are funded by the national government. After gaining their wildcard status, the team received extra finance, but resources are still stretched.
“The finance from the government is just for Olympic medals, not for the Tour de France or Giro d’Italia,” the team’s coach, Gleb Groysman, told me for Cyclingnews last year. He described Uzbekistan as “not a cycling country, absolutely not.”
“We cannot race all WorldTour races because we don't have enough riders. We have maybe three or four girls ready to race in the WorldTour, and they are very young,” Groysman continued.
“We have a very, very hard situation because there are not enough bikes, wheels, anything…staff is problem number one. There are no professional staff there.”
The squad is made up entirely of riders from Uzbekistan. This includes their Russian-born leader Olga Zabelinskaya, a winner of three Olympic medals on the road when she was representing the nation of her birth. The 44 year old made the switch over to Uzbekistan a few years ago and has been a mentor for the rest of the team, eleven of whom are 22 or younger. She has decided to forgo the Tour de France Femmes in favour of recovery ahead of the World Championships in September.
“I have the leaders in the mountain, [Yanina] Kuskova, we have a good rider for time trial, [Margarita] Misyurina, and now we have this good sprinter [Sofia] Karimova,” Groysman says, listing his talent.
Kuskova is a particularly interesting rider. She is the current Uzbekistan national champion and has scored several impressive results in Europe and around the world in the last two seasons. She’s a tall rider and a gifted climber and most recently finished 51st at the Olympic Games Road Race in Paris. She is emerging as a leader in this team and is the most likely to show the Tashkent colours at the Tour de France Femmes.
Misyurina is a solid rouleur who may get in a breakaway. Sadly Karimova has not raced since March due to injury. The rest of the team are young, developing riders on a steep learning curve.
Although the team has 14 riders registered in their squad, they have only 8 to choose from in Europe, leaving them thin on the ground when injuries and crashes inevitably happen.
Read more: The case of the fabricated national championships
So far this season the team has struggled in the WorldTour races it has competed in. None of their riders finished June’s Tour de Suisse Women and only Kuskova managed to get to the end of the Giro d’Italia Women a few weeks later. Groysman told me that the squad had been struck with crashes and illness before those two races, contributing to their poor performances.
Cycling in Uzbekistan has been on a dramatic ascendency over the past few years. Groysman took on the role of coaching the women’s national team and Tashkent City three years ago. Groysman, who coached a teenage Pavel Sivakov in his native Russia, has been impressed by the talent in Uzbekistan but is realistic about their chances.
“All the girls are very, very motivated and ready to work. I don't have any problem with working, they really work, 24/7,” Groysman said.
“We cannot win the Tour de France. A good result for us in the first year would be to finish there with all our riders. Maybe on one stage a top-three, maybe. We cannot win right now, but if we can finish, it would be great for our first season racing in the WorldTour.”
Groysman is working hard to build this team into a respectable force in the peloton. He tries to encourage his riders that they do have a place in the higher levels of the sport. “Don’t be afraid of anything, just try to race,” he tells them.
The Giro, Strade Bianche and the early season WorldTour races the team have already taken part in this year have been a step up, but the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will be another stratosphere for the young Uzbeks. Earlier this week, Groysman told Global Peloton over WhatsApp about their preparations and chances for the great race.
“Everything is not bad. We are near Paris now for training camp...I hope we could do the better results in the Tour de France than Giro. But our team is very young, not experienced and not enough rich to win the Tour de France.
“We have some injuries like other teams. Some crashes, some illnesses. But [this is] cycling. [The] main issue is we have just eight women riders total, but another teams have 15+ riders [across their entire squad] and we are limited to have enough good riders for top races.”
The rhetoric in the media and online has been fairly negative towards Tashkent and their inclusion in the Tour de France Femmes and Women’s WorldTour. Many people have said that they do not deserve their place and shouldn’t be allowed to compete due to the sources of their 2023 UCI points.
My opinion is that Tashkent themselves have done nothing wrong. They have merely played the UCI points game perfectly to put themselves in the best place. They are going to struggle at the Tour, that seems obvious. But they seem to be making a genuine effort to develop the sport in Uzbekistan - and that should be commended. They have also shown that the UCI points system is set up in a way that no matter where you race, there is a pathway to race in the WorldTour and that has to be a good thing in my book. It is the WORLDTour after all.
Tashkent City Women PCT squad for 2024 Tour de France Femmes:
Yanina Kuskova
Mohinabonu Elmurdova
Madina Kakhorova
Nafosat Kozieva
Ekaterina Knebelva
Margarita Misyurina
Asal Rizaeva
What do you think of Tashkent’s inclusion in the Tour de France Femmes, and how do you think they will get on?
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I love underdogs so I think it’s great to have them in the TdFF.
I wish them well and will be watching and cheering for them