S13 Ep151: Trapdoor - Inside the Astana Miracle
The Cycling Podcast
The Cycling Podcast
4.7 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 19 November 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
First up is Astana and their miraculous recovery from a dire position a year ago. Exactly how did the recruitment of a data scientist, new bikes, a bit of ‘Moneyball’ recruitment and a completely fresh approach to race planning revive a team that looked dead and buried twelve months ago? Maybe the key individual in the whole, miraculous process, the team’s Head of Performance, Vasilis Anastopoulos, reveals many if not all of the secrets in this interview with Daniel Friebe.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to the cycling podcast. |
| 0:25.2 | Hello, my name is Daniel Freeber and I'm here to guide you through today's departure from the usual programming in this long, you may also say tedious intermezzo, between the 2025 and |
| 0:30.9 | 26 cycling seasons. A departure because today we've got something slightly different for you. |
| 0:37.0 | A few weeks ago, the most intriguing subplot of the 2025 campaign then drawing to its conclusion |
| 0:42.0 | was the fight for survival in cycling's top division, the World Tour, at the end of the three-year |
| 0:47.1 | 2023 to 2025 promotion and relegation cycle. |
| 0:52.2 | Most of you will remember the outcome. Subject to Lotto and |
| 0:54.9 | Antalmarcher's long-mouted merger finally going through, and with Archaia shutting up shop, |
| 0:59.9 | Confidis ultimately lost their World Tour status to Uno X Mobility. Over the three counting seasons, |
| 1:06.0 | the French team had scored 25,926 points to the Scandinavians 26,324. |
| 1:14.3 | The three-year game of snakes and ladders has many critics, but there can be no disputing |
| 1:17.9 | at this time, at least, it was a compelling watch in those last weeks of the autumn. |
| 1:21.9 | We certainly thought it merited further investigation, which is why this week's episode |
| 1:25.2 | will be the first in a series of specials, each |
| 1:27.6 | going behind the scenes of one of the imperiled teams' battles to retain their World Tour status. |
| 1:32.7 | The plan is for the first two installments to go out its regular episodes and the others to |
| 1:36.6 | be published in the next couple of weeks as Kilometer Zero Friends specials. Just a reminder |
| 1:41.4 | that by signing up as a friend of the cycling podcast, you're facilitating our annual on-the-ground coverage of races like the Grand Tours. |
| 1:47.8 | You can become a friend for as little as £35 a year by going to thecyclingpodcast.com and clicking on the Become A Friend link. |
| 1:55.9 | In a way, we're starting our mini-series with the most fascinating, certainly surprising story of all. |
| 2:01.0 | XDS Astana's astonishing rise out of the relegation zone. |
| 2:05.5 | The Kazakh outfit, of course, has a long, sometimes illustrious, often controversial history |
... |
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