2010 Euskaltel–Euskadi season  The 2010 season for began in January with the Tour Down Under and ended at the Giro di Lombardia. As a UCI ProTour team, they were automatically invited and obliged to attend every event in the ProTour. The season is the sixteenth for the unofficial Basque national team. The team's manager is former Euskadi rider Igor González de Galdeano, who is in his first year in the position after taking over from Miguel Madariaga. A notable rider joining the team in 2010 is Romain Sicard, the reigning under-23 world champion. Sicard, from the French Basque Country, is only the second non-Spanish rider ever to join the team. Ages as of January 1, 2010. As they did in 2009, Euskaltel declined invitation to the Giro d'Italia in 2010. Sánchez was the leader of Euskaltel's squad for the Tour, with several Grand Tour veterans beside him, though the team held out some strong riders for the Vuelta a España later in the season. Their goals were a stage win and a high overall placing for Sánchez, who did not ride the Tour in 2009 but had finished seventh overall in 2008. The squad, being largely composed of climbing specialists, was quiet through the flat stages in the Tour's first week. In stage 8, the race's first mountain stage, Sánchez made all the day's selections and finished at the head of the race, just missing out on a stage win as Andy Schleck pipped him in a two-up sprint. The result did, however, move Sánchez from 21st up to ninth in the overall standings. In stage 9, Sánchez responded to an attack from Schleck and Alberto Contador, briefly riding past them. The two in turn attacked past Sánchez and finished the stage over a minute ahead of him. Sánchez did, however, stay ahead of the other elite riders in the race, gaining a minute on them and moving up to third in the overall classification. In stage 12, Sánchez finished with the main group on the road for sixth on the day, losing ten seconds to Contador but maintaining third overall. In stage 14, after Contador and Schleck, the top two men in the overall standings, came to a bizarre seeming track stand in the stage's final kilometer, Sánchez and fourth place man Denis Menchov rode past them and gained 14 seconds back.