News shorts: Stybar, Urán lead Etixx-Quickstep in Clasica San Sebastian

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Uran, Stybar lead Etixx-Quickstep at Clasica San Sebastian

Fresh off his Tour de France stage victory, Zdenek Stybar will head up the Etixx-Quickstep roster for the Clasica San Sebastian on Saturday together with Rigoberto Uran. Stybar finished 10th last year in the WorldTour race.

The team will also have Julian Alaphilippe, second in both Flèche Wallonne and Liège - Bastogne - Liège in its midst as they tackle the 219km event.

"We have a nice team at the start of this race," Sport Director Tom Steels said. "At the start will be riders like Uran and Stybar, that come from the Tour de France and can be protagonists in a race with this kind of profile. With them we can also count on riders like Pietery Serry, who showed his condition in Tour de Wallonie, and a fresh rider like Julian Alaphilippe who comes back into competition after a few weeks off. We will see how far he can go. The rest of the team is strong and compact, and will be able to play a role. Our goal is to be there in the final with as many riders as we can, and try to go for a good result."

Etixx-Quickstep for Clasica San Sebastian: Zdenek Stybar, Julian Alaphilippe, Pieter Serry, Matteo Trentin, Rigoberto Uran, Stijn Vandenbergh, Julien Vermote, and Martin Velits.

Bos back in action at Prudential RideLondon

Dutch sprinter Theo Bos will make his return to competition in Sunday's Prudential RideLondon after spending the past 10 weeks rehabilitating an injured shoulder. Bos was one of several riders to go down in the stage 2 crash in California, and he suffered torn tendons in his shoulder and a dislocated collarbone, and had to have two surgeries.

Bos will join fellow sprinters Gerald Ciolek, Andreas Stauff, Kristian Sbaragli, Tyler Farrar and Nic Dougall on the start line in London.

Broken Bonnet subjected to doping control

William Bonnet (FDJ), the rider who suffered most from the stage 3 crash in the Tour de France, is spending his days strapped to a neck and back brace in order to let his fractured vertebrae heal, but he still has to do his duty as a professional cyclist and be subjected to anti-doping controls.

Bonnet joked on Twitter about the late-evening out-of-competition test, saying "Is this targeted testing? Simple, I won't be leaving my house for three months. No racing until 2016. 22h"

Swirbul to miss Tour of Utah

American U23 road champion Keegan Swirbul (Axeon) was forced to scrap plans to compete in the upcoming Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah after suffering a concussion while racing in Italy last week with the USA Cycling national team. Swirbul broke the news on Twitter:

The talented 19-year-old climber suffered a concussion during the Giro Ciclistico della Valle d’Aosta Mont Blanc, a six-day stage race that is the fifth round of the UCI’s Espoirs Nations Cup. Swirbul’s development from an off-road specialist, who famously beat Lance Armstrong in an Aspen MTB race when he was just 15, into to a road race champion has been relatively swift, thanks to a steady diet of international competition with Axeon and USA Cycling’s development program.

Swirbul won his championship in June on a windswept Lake Tahoe course after his team dismantled the field with a series of sustained attacks. Axeon’s Greg Daniel was second.

Swirbul was listed on the Axeon team roster that the race released today, as was Tao Geoghegan Hart, who signed as a trainee with Team Sky for the month of August. Other riders on the team’s preliminary roster include Gregory Daniel, Daniel Eaton, James Oram, Chris Putt, Ruben Guerreiro and Logan Owen. Final rosters aren’t due until 72 hours before the race begins on Monday. (PM)