Garmin-Cervelo and BMC mass at the front of the peloton.(Image credit: Sirotti)
WorldTour teams Katusha and BMC have announced their teams for the upcoming Tour of Beijing, with both teams bringing high calibre line-ups to the first year event.
BMC will be targeting the overall and the sprints with young talents Brent Bookwalter, and Alexander Kristoff. American Bookwalter, was a key domestique for Cadel Evans at the Tour de France, and now gets a chance to chase his own ambitions in China.
"We don’t get to see a lot of that [the surroundings] or immerse ourselves in a whole lot of that during a bike race, but I’ve never been anywhere is Asia so just to see a new part of the world and to see it through a bike race is a good opportunity," Bookwalter said.
BMC Racing Team Assistant Director Michael Sayers said that as a first year event, the Tour of Beijing course will remain relatively unknown until the race itself.
"What I do know is that it will be an exciting race in an amazing country," Sayers said. "There are a lot of factors that will make it a good race."
Katusha confident in Galimzyanov
Team Katusha Sport Director Gennady Mikhaylov has put his faith in Galimzyanov’s finish in China, building the majority of the team around his stage winning abilities.
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"We'll go into Beijing with our best sprinter, Galimzyanov, for winning some stages at the bunch dashes," said Mikhaylov. "In order to make him do his best, we also decided to bring his usual training group for sprints, composed of [Stijn] Vandenbergh, [Vladimir] Isaychev, [Alexandr] Porsev and [Egor] Silin."
Having just won Paris-Brussels Galimzyanov comes to China with plenty of form. Currently at the world championships in Copenhagen where he is leading the Russian national team, the 24-year-old said that he'd like to make history at the Tour of Beijing by being the first Russian to win a stage.
"That will be my goal in Tour of Beijing," said Galimzyanov. "With Katusha, Itera-Katusha and the whole Russian Cycling Global Project, we proved that cycling can spread worldwide. This Tour of Beijing will be an interesting stage of this process."
"Let's hope, for the Chinese, this will be a huge show," he added.
BMC for Tour of Beijing: Chad Beyer (USA), Brent Bookwalter (USA), Chris Butler (USA), Alexander Kristoff (Nor), Amaël Moinard (Fra), John Murphy (USA), Danilo Wyss (Sui), Simon Zahner (Sui)
Katusha for Tour of Beijing: Denis Galimzyanov (Rus), Vladimir Isaychev (Rus), Artem Ovechkin (Rus), Alexandr Pliuschin (Mda), Alexander Porsev (Rus), Egor Silin (Rus), Nikolay Trusov (Rus), Stijn Vandenbergh (Bel)
