2009 Astana season

Astana
2009 season
The Astana Volvo team car in 2009.
UCI code	AST
Status	UCI ProTour team
World Ranking	1st (1100 points)[1]
Manager	Johan Bruyneel
Main sponsor(s)	Samruk-Kazyna
Based	Kazakhstan
Bicycles	Trek
Groupset	SRAM
Season victories
One-day races	none
Stage race overall	5
Stage race stages	13
Grand Tours	1
National Championships	2
Most wins	Alberto Contador (10 wins)
Best ranked rider	Alberto Contador (1st)
← 2008 2010 →

The 2009 season for the Astana cycling team began in January with the Tour Down Under and ended in October with the Giro di Lombardia. As a UCI ProTour team, they were automatically invited to and obliged to attend every UCI ProTour event, and were invited to every event in the inaugural UCI World Calendar as well.

With a strong identity as a stage racing team, Astana's leaders in 2009 were Alberto Contador, Levi Leipheimer, and Lance Armstrong, who returned to competitive cycling in 2009 after a four-year absence. The team's manager up through the Tour de France was Johan Bruyneel.

The team's biggest success in 2009 was Contador's overall victory in the Tour de France. Elsewhere, their main successes in 2009 were in small stage races, with Contador winning the Volta ao Algarve and the Vuelta al País Vasco as well as two stages in Paris–Nice, and Leipheimer winning the Tour of California and the Vuelta a Castilla y León. The team also won the team classification at numerous events. The team failed to live up to lofty expectations in the Giro d'Italia; Leipheimer was widely considered a favorite for victory, as was Armstrong before a collarbone injury sustained weeks before, but Leipheimer finished sixth overall and the team did not win any stage.

Away from competition, the team's season was marked by financial troubles with their sponsors in the Kazakhstani government, which threatened the team's makeup and very existence for a time. The return of Alexander Vinokourov from retirement and a ban for doping, which ended just as the 2009 Tour de France did, changed the team's makeup for 2010.