Bozic to lead Astana Pro Team in Hamburg at one-day Vattenfall Cyclassic.

Astana Pro Team rider Borut Bozic will lead Astana Pro Team at the Vattenfall Cyclassic in Hamburg, Germany on Saturday.

Bozic, who rode a strong cobblestone month in Belgium before crashing and breaking a bone in his wrist at Paris-Roubaix in April, will line up at the one-day circuit race with a team built around his strengths as a sprinter with exceptional talent over long distances and leg-breaking hills.

Bozic’s best result at the Vattenfall Cyclassics is a third place in 2011 after Gerald Ciolek, who finished two and the winner Edvald Boasson Hagen.

Astana Pro Team Director Sportif Dmitriy Sedoun said that the one-day race in Hamburg is an extremely difficult course that loops through the city centre and a series of hilly residential neighbourhoods to finish with an elite selection for the final sprint.

"The race is 246km, and that's enough to make a very difficult competition. Sprinters are typically the favourites at Vattenfall, because the final climb is more than 15k from the finish and there is usually a group of 20 riders or more who make the selection. But the hills are steep and narrow, and the speed up the 15 per cent Waseberg climb is usually very high. We know Bozic is the kind of rider who is best adapted for this race, but to line up next to him we will also send Gasparotto and Ponzi, which will give us more cards to play on Sunday," Sedoun said.

Astana’s roster for Vattenfall Cyclassics: Borut Bozic, Enrico Gasparotto, Francesco Gavazzi, Assan Bazayev, Dmitriy Gruzdev, Jacopo Guarnieri, Dmitriy Muravyev and Simone Ponzi.