With Paris-Nice underway on French roads, over in Italy Tirreno-Adriatico rolls out this Wednesday, starting with its usual team time trial before tackling various different terrains over the course of the week.

Team Giant-Alpecin will head to the seven-day race with a team ready to challenge on different fronts, including Nikias Arndt (GER) and Luka Mezgec (SLO) for the sprints, and also Simon Geschke (GER) to attack the tougher finishes. 

For the sprints the team has strong support riders experienced in the lead-outs, including Bert De Backer (BEL), Albert Timmer (NED) and Tom Veelers (NED). The line-up is completed by Chad Haga (USA) and Thierry Hupond (FRA) who both line up for their first Tirreno-Adriatico.

The team was meant to be present with Marcel Kittel (GER) at the race, however following the decision of the team's physicians he was replaced in the line-up in order to fully recover from early season illness.

"Despite the late change in line-up we will still focus on the sprint opportunities and we have a strong line-up for this," explained coach Marc Reef. "Luka has been ill recently but he's fit to start the race and depending on whether he's fully recovered we'll make the decision to sprint with him. For the rest of the race we will look to be opportunistic and to push for stage results with Simon on the harder stages.

"I also hope that we can get the race underway with a strong team time trial, and to continue with the progression that we have made in this discipline as a team in the past few seasons."