Luis Leon Sanchez goes into his second season at Astana and again he will act as a key domestique for Fabio Aru whom he will support in virtually every race until the Tour de France.

Sanchez now knows his schedule which has just been finalized. Today he will travel from Calpe where he has been training with his teammates to Kazakhstan to attend the official presentation of Astana on Saturday.

Biciciclismo reveals that the management confirmed his schedule yesterday: Tour Down Under, Volta a la Valenciana, Vuelta a Murcia, Clasica de Almeria, Volta ao Algarve, Paris-Nice, Tour of the Basque Country, Amstel Gold Race, Fleche-Wallonne, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Criterium du Dauphine, National Championships and the Tour de France. The open question is whether he will also do the Tour de Romandie.

Except for his Australian debut (Lars Boom, Maxat Ayazbayev, Laurens De Vreese, Arman Kamyshev, Davide Malacarne and Lieuwe Westra will be his teammates), Luis Leon Sanchez will join Aru in most of the races, lining up alongside the Italian in Valencia, Paris-Nice, the Basque Country, the Ardennes and the Dauphiné. The Spanish rider won the Tour Down Under in 2005 and Paris-Nice in 2009. He also has four stage wins in the French race.

His work for Aru in both the Giro d'Italia where the Sardinian was second behind Alberto Contador, and the Vuelta a Espana which he won, has  made him an important rider in the group around the leader.