2007 Astana season

Astana
2007 season
UCI codeAST
ManagerMarc Biver
Season victories
One-day races4
Stage race overall3
Stage race stages12
National Championships2
2008 →

The 2007 season for the Astana cycling team was its first, though the team's sponsors in the Kazakhstani government had entered the sport the year before backing the dissolved Liberty Seguros team. That same team was known as "Astana" for part of the season, including the 2006 Vuelta a España, but as the UCI license previously held by Manolo Saiz transferred to new ownership, headquartered in a new nation, it is considered a new team from 2007 onward. The team's manager for the 2007 season was former Tour de Suisse organizer Marc Biver, who had never before managed a cycling team at any level.

The team's season began with the Tour of Qatar in late January and ended in November with Aaron Kemps' victory in the Noosa International Criterium. Astana participated in the 2007 UCI ProTour, but after withdrawing from the 2007 Tour de France due to doping perpetrated by Alexander Vinokourov, they participated in just one further ProTour event. Astana's 2007 season was largely marked by doping, as Vinokourov, Andrey Kashechkin, Matthias Kessler, and Eddy Mazzoleni all either tested positive for doping or were otherwise implicated in scandals and fired from the team. José Antonio Redondo was also fired during the 2007 season.

The repeated doping scandals caused the team's sponsors to eventually remove Biver as manager, replacing him in the offseason with Johan Bruyneel, whose Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team dissolved after the 2007 season.

The team's biggest win in 2007 that was not tainted by a doping scandal was Andreas Klöden's overall victory in Tirreno–Adriatico. The team also claimed stage wins in the Giro d'Italia and the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré, and won a stage and the overall title in the Tour de Luxembourg.