Team Columbia will be on the hunt for stage wins of all shapes and sizes in the Tour of Poland, the last ProTour event of the 2008 season.
“Gerald Ciolek is our man for the bunch sprints.” reported team sports director Valerio Piva.
“He got a great stage win in the Tour of Germany in a tough uphill finish, and he’ll be in Poland looking to do the same.”
“At the same time, there are plenty of long, flat stages in Poland for Gerald to fine-tune his form for the World Championships the following week.”
“You can tell he’s motivated, he volunteered to do this race.”
Tour of Germany overall winner Linus Gerdemann was initially down to do the seven-day stage race as well, but finally is not taking part.
“He’s giving it a miss because at Germany he had to go in deep first to take and then defend the overall lead, and he needs to recover for the last part of the season.” Piva explained.
“For that reason we won’t be going there with the intention of fighting for the overall classification.”
“The team is pretty exhausted after all the work they did in Germany, and at this late point in the season we don’t have the firepower to defend an overall lead all week.”
“But riders like Tony [Martin], Marcus [Burghardt] and Thomas [Lovkvist] are always good for breakaways, and then we’ve got Gerald for the bunch sprints.”
“The opening team time trial is always a possibility, too, and it’s a great honour for any team to win. However, being so short [four kilometres long] it’s hard to predict what’ll happen.”
“So we may not have a gc leader, but we’re sure to have a good impact on the race.”
The Tour of Poland starts on September 14th in Warsaw and finishes on September 20th in Krakow.

Team Columbia for Tour of Poland: Marcus Burghardt (Ger), Gerald Ciolek (Ger), Bert Grabsch (Ger), Thomas Lovkvist (Swe), Tony Martin (Ger), Morris Possoni (Ita), Marcel Sieberg (Ger), Kanstantin Siutzou (Byl).



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