Cavendish Heads for Pyrenees

 

Story posted May 15
Seven-day climb-fest in the Pyrenees for T-Mobile

Team Press Release

 

The T-Mobile Team start the Tour of Catalonia on Monday (May 21-27) with a mixed squad of youth and experience. "We will focus on stage wins, we won't pay special attention to the GC," says sporting director Jan Schaffrath.

 

Australia’s Michael Rogers and Germany’s Linus Gerdemann lead the team at the seven-day tour through the rocky Pyrenees. Last year Gerdemann was an impressive sixth overall in Catalonian debut - finishing just 49 seconds adrift of outright winner David Canada of Spain. Supporting the Aussie/German duo are Luxembourg Champion Kim Kirchen, Australia’s Scott Davis, Denmark’s Jacob Piil, climbing specialist Giuseppe Guerini and Austrian sprinter Bernhard Eisel.

 

Rounding out the eight-strong roster is the in-form sprinter Mark Cavendish who makes his first appearance at a ProTour race. The Manxman has been making excellent progress on the road so far this season, and now he will get a chance to experience a different kind of race. "Mark is a thorough-bred sprinter with excellent prospects. But we want to see how he copes on the climbs," says Jan Schaffrath. Though still buzzing after his winning streak at the "Four Days of Dunkirk,' Cavendish knows that Catalonia will be a completely different kind of beast: "It will be a very tough!"

 

"I am down in Italy at the moment, staying with my mate Geraint (Thomas, Barloworld) and training here for six days, to concentrate on getting fitter for my next race which is the Tour of Catalonia – my first ProTour race. I was originally scheduled to ride the Tour of Rhineland-Pfalz, but the team management wanted to see how I go in Catalonia. It will be tough. Then I ride the Philadelphia Week in June - we are going there with a full sprint team, so it’s quite promising and I’m looking forward to it"

 

 

Talking about the British Cycling National RR Championships in Beverley at the end of June, he says "the nationals are a big goal for me, I like the course and it’s a nice race to end the first half of the season. Myself and Roger will travel over for that, so we'll take it from there. Allan Peiper will be coming over as well with a team car, so we will have good support."

 

His stage race in the Pyrenees has 16 categorised climbs. Monday’s team time trial opener is followed by two medium mountain stages, before the race really gets down to business on Thursday’s ‘queen stage’ - a 203 km suffer-fest that culminates in a summit finish in Arinsal, Andorra, at 1,950m. And there’s no free-wheeling from there - the peloton stay in the Pyrenees Friday for a 17 km mountain time trial from Sornas (1,300m) up to Arcalis in Andorra (2.200m), taking in 900 metres of vertical climbing along the way. When the race ends in Barcelona on May 27 the riders from 25 teams will have covered 877 km in total.

 

The T-Mobile roster in brief:
Mark Cavendish (21/Great Britain), Scott Davis (28/Australia), Bernhard Eisel (26/Austria), Linus Gerdemann (24/Germany), Giuseppe Guerini
(37/Italy), Kim Kirchen (28/Luxembourg), Jacob Piil (34/Denmark), Michael Rogers (27/Australia).

Sporting director: Jan Schaffrath (35

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