LottoNL-Jumbo will have a busy cycling year. The only Dutch team at the highest level will do all the new WorldTour races except for the Tour of Turkey. "That race does not fit into our schedule," Nico Verhoeven tells Wielerflits.

The Presidential Cycling Tour of Turkey will be held from 18 to 23rd April. 

"That’s in the period of the Amstel Gold Race, the Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège," Verhoeven explains. "Just after the race, we have the Tour de Romandie. In addition, it comes just after the classic period where we work with a base of ten riders. They need to have a break, just at the time of the race in Turkey. The political situation is not quite comfortable in Turkey. But if you look purely at the schedule, that race does not come at a good time."

In the same period, a part of the selection for the Giro d'Italia is also training at altitude.

Team manager Richard Plugge is not too pleased with the new World Tour races. 

"I would prefer not to ride all. We will do the Chinese stage race (Tour of Guangxi, ed.) because we work on this race together with Velon. For the sport, it is good, I think. But it's not about what we want to ride or not. I would have liked to organizer the season better."

LottoNL-Jumbo will do the ten new WorldTour races so that they can determine in which races the team can get the most points in the future. 

"The World Tour rankings and World Tour calendar are super important from 2018. We want to know how we can score the best in the World Tour as a team. "