The Giro del Trentino starts from tomorrow and MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung will be lining up for the Italian UCI 2.HC event with a strong African team. The race will be run over 4 stages, covering over 500km of Italy's best climbing roads.

The opening stage is a short and flat 13km team trial that should not see too much time being gained or lost. The difference will be made in the following 3 road stages with mountain top finishes on stages 2 and 3 while the final stage also has 2 category 2 climbs to contend with before the rolling road home.

This race suits the out and out climbers and with the Giro d'Italia around the corner, the World Tour stars heading to the Italian grand tour will be out to fine tune their form at Trentino. This will serve as great test for the African riders as they go head to head with some of the world’s leading climbers. MTN-Qhubeka p/b Samsung performed well at last year’s edition of the race with Louis Meintjes finishing 2nd during the queen stage, securing the young rider jersey and 5th place overall.

Louis Meintjes will be back this year to improve on his previous performance and Merhawi Kudus will also look to perform well in the Italian mountains. Completing the all African line up is Natnael Berhane, Daniel Teklehaimanot, Nic Dougall, Johann van Zyl and Adrien Niyonshuti.

"Trentino is race that really suits my strengths and it is also a race I have done well in before. I hope the good fortunes I have been having with the first part of my season continues and that I can do even better than I did last year at Trentino," Meintjes said.

"Giro del Trentino is one of the hardest short stage races on the calendar and most of the World Tour teams use it as a final test before the Giro d'Italia," sports director Alex Sans Vega said. "We will be represented by a 100% African line up including Louis Meintjes who finished last year inside the top 5. We are going to ride to do as well as we did last year and work hard for a stage win. There are 3 hard days in the mountains which suits our team perfectly. We would like to bring in another win with our African riders and so we really look forward to this race."