WEVELGEM - OPQS announces the 13 riders who are still in the hunt for the nine spots available to race the Tour de France.
Jan Bakelants (Belgium)
Tom Boonen (Belgium)*
Mark Cavendish (Great Britain)
Thomas De Gendt (Belgium)
Michal Golas (Poland)
Michal Kwiatkowski (Poland)
Tony Martin (Germany)
Alessandro Petacchi (Italy)
Mark Renshaw (Australia)
Gert Steegmans (Belgium)
Niki Terpstra (Nederlands)
Matteo Trentin (Italy)
Martin Velits (Slovakia)
*RESERVE
“We will announce the nine names of the riders who are selected for the Tour only on Monday after Tour de Suisse,” Sport and Development Manager Rolf Aldag said. “We want to see how things will be there first, and be sure everybody is healthy and ready for the competition. All 13 names are important. Those guys showed to the team great commitment whether they will be in the final selection of 9 or not. They are all ready and fit for the race. We appreciate the availability also of a guy like Tom Boonen. He’s the only one who knows already he will be one of the reserves. He shows again that he is a great professional and he really cares about this team. We know we can count on him if we need him at the very last moment. For the rest, everybody knows our main objectives will be the stage wins with Cavendish and a new experience in the Tour with Kwiatkowski to make another improvement, a new step in his career. We will build our team around those two guys to be a competitive and strong team in order to try and reach our goals.”