Quick-Step Floors the Tour de France, taking two stage wins. Bettini defended his world championship in Stuttgart. In 2008 Gert Steegmans took the final stage of the 2008 Tour de France on the Champs-Élysées. Paolo Bettini retired after the world championship in Varese. In both 2008 and 2009 Stijn Devolder took the Tour of Flanders and Tom Boonen, Paris–Roubaix. After two seasons of disappointment, a resurgent Omega Pharma–Quick-Step and Tom Boonen, took four major Spring classics victories, including the four cobblestone courses E3 Harelbeke, Gent–Wevelgem, Tour of Flanders, Paris–Roubaix. In October 2012, the team fired their veteran rider Levi Leipheimer after he
Persian leopard youth ecological group's working initiative, and is to specifically study the leopard in Armenia and in the Caucasus region. Present day, it has become common to establish a Leopard Record Monitoring Network in the Caucasus as a significant step in the formation of leopard distribution and ecology in the region. In 2009, a Persian Leopard Breeding and Rehabilitation Centre was created in the Sochi National Park, where two male leopards from Turkmenistan are being kept since September 2009, and two females from Iran since May 2010. Their descendants are planned to be released into the wild in the Caucasus Biosphere