Brajkovic headed to Astana?

Squeezed out by the merger between RadioShack and Leopard Trek, Slovenian Janez Brajkovic could be headed to the Astana team, where he would likely share leadership for the Grand Tours with Roman Kreuziger and Alexander Vinokourov.

The French cycling federation's web site, FFC.fr, published a story claiming that Brajkovic has decided to go with Astana for 2012, but the team has yet to confirm the signing.

The Kazakh team is in dire need of the UCI points that would come with Brajkovic: the 2010 Critérium du Dauphiné winner this year took third in the Tour of Utah, seventh in Paris-Nice and the Tour de Romandie and ninth in this year's Dauphiné.

Brajkovic touched off speculation surrounding his future after a cryptic comment on Twitter last week: "JB [Johan Bruyneel] never tried to sell me elsewhere, he'd never do that. He is a great and honest man who always tried to help."

Interviewed at the UCI road world championships, Brajkovic told Cyclingnews he was looking to race the Tour de France for his own ambitions in the next year or two.

He was one of RadioShack's co-leaders in this year's race, along with Levi Leipheimer, Chris Horner and Andreas Klöden, but crashed out of the Tour with a broken collarbone and concussion.