With much of the cycling-world’s focus on the Tour de France, it is easy to neglect the importance and toughness of the Tour of Poland, a WorldTour race in its own right. The seven-stage race, won by Tinkoff’s own Rafal Majka back in 2014 and Peter Sagan in 2011, gets underway this coming Tuesday and Tinkoff heads to the race with a balanced team to compete over all terrains offered up.
 
Jesper Hansen leads the roster in search of a strong GC finish, and he comes the tour that he raced for the first time last season after a season of progression. Hansenfinished the Tour of Croatia in second spot this spring, and had a good showing at the Tour de Langkawi where he ended up fifth overall.
 
Danielle Bennati will also make his return to racing in Poland, following his crash at Milan-Sanremo which saw him fracture his L4 vertebra. He will be joined by the hugely experienced Sergio Paulinho, a rider capable of results on the tough climbing stages himself, as well as the Russian trio of Pavel Brutt, Evgeny Petrov and Yuri Trofimov.

Tinkoff will have a new national champion lining up at the race too, with Juraj Sagan showing off his Slovakian road race champion’s jersey. Sagan will be hoping to test his legs in the breakaways, looking for results from a smaller group. Jesús Hernández completes the roster, with the Spanish rider looking to play a roll in the hills.
 
Ahead of the race, Sport Director Jan Valach explained more about the line-up. “Poland will be Benna’s first race back, and it’s a good race for him as it’s not super hard and there are some chances to test himself early on, but with no stress either. We have a balanced team with Jesper heading the GC fight. He has shown already in Malaysia and Croatia that he is good for this and hopefully we can push for a good result but this is a WorldTour race and a step up so there won’t be too much pressure there.”
 
“Hernández, Petrov and Trofimov will be a good help for Jesper in the hills, and then for the breakaways we have Pavel Brutt, who was up the road a lot at the Giro, and also Juraj Sagan. Then finally we have Paulinho as a captain to guide the team. It’s an important race for us and we will take our opportunities with all our riders, looking for stage results day by day and supporting Jesper too.”
 
After two initial stages that suit large group or bunch sprints, the Tour of Poland gradually gets harder as the race progresses. Stage three struggles to offer much flat at all over the long, 240km parcours, while a succession of hills in the second half of stage four may also thwart the sprinters’ efforts.

The key stages for the GC come later in the week on days five and six, with the latter being a very heavy stage of climbing, with continuous back-to-back categorised climbs to tackle over five laps of a large circuit. The race then culminates with an individual time trial on stage 7 after which the 2016 winner will be confirmed.
 
“The first two stages aren’t too long but after that all the days are around 200km or over so it will be a good race to build from,” Valach added. “Stages 5 and 6 will be key for the overall, key days for the climbers, but we have to pay attention every day.”