UCI expels Brunei Continental Team from Tour de Beauce

Organisers of the Tour de Beauce announced Friday that the UCI has withdrawn the Brunei Continental Cycling Team from the 34th edition of the race for violating "specific regulations regarding the maximum number of riders that a team can include in its roster during the season".

The Brunei-registered team added Canadian Bruno Lanlglois to their four-rider roster for the UCI 2.2 stage race that runs from June 19 to June 23 in the Saint-Georges region of Quebec.

Langlois finished the first stage in fourth place after making the day's successful breakaway, but he dropped to 50th on the queen stage to Mont-Megantic on Thursday. Other riders on the team's Beauce roster include American Rolly Weaver, Briton James Jobber and Belgian Mehdi Tigrine.

The team was removed from the race before the start of the stage 3a individual time trial Friday morning.

"All the results posted by the cyclists of this Asian team will be removed from the different rankings of the stage race currently in progress," organisers said in a statement sent to media Friday morning. "Quebec cyclist Bruno Langlois was invited at the last moments by the Brunei team to take part in the Tour de Beauce."

The team is a first-year Continental program with a 16-rider roster before Langlois, a 40-year-old Canadian who last rode on the UCI level for Garneau-Québecor in 2017, was added for Beauce. The team's 2019 roster includes just three riders from Brunei, as well as riders from Turkey, South Africa, Great Britain, Greece, Canada, Malaysia, Indonesia, Belgium and the US.

Canadian Nicolas Zukowsky (Floyd's Pro Cycling) led the overall at Beauce going into the Friday morning time trial, with James Piccoli (Canada) second at 33 seconds and Ty Magner (Rally UHC Cycling) third at 36 seconds. Racing continues Friday evening with the 77km stage 3b criterium in Saint-Georges.