Etixx-Quick Step will not be present at the start of the Tour of Qatar. According to the president of the Qatar Cycling Federation, the Belgian team were not invited for disciplinary reasons.

"QuickStep is an important team who have won a lot in the Tour of Qatar but we noticed in the past couple of years that we had a problem with discipline with QuickStep," Sheikh Al-Thani told reporters at a press conference in Doha according to Cyclingnews. "For the podium, we asked them not to do interviews [immediately after the finish] because we have limited time for the podium, we are live on air. But they take too much time to change their shoes. At the Ladies Tour of Qatar, they don’t change their shoes, but QuickStep wanted to take a chair, they wanted to change their shoes, lie down and after that do an inteview. We told them for a couple of years not to do it but they still did it.

"We told them they cannot do that and that’s for a couple of years: [last year] wasn’t the first time. And there were some problems in the hotel, discipline things."

When A.S.O. announced the list of the teams, Etixx-Quick Step directeur sportif Wilfried Peeters told Sporza that his team was absent for sporting reasons. He suggested that the riders wanted to reduce the travel by having the Classics units race in Spain and Portugal in February.

Etixx-Quick-Step have dominated this race with Tom Boonen (2006, 2008, 2009, 2012) and Niki Terpstra successful in 2014 and 2015, but the Dutchman will not be able to defend his title.