Defending champions Omega Pharma-Quick Step has selected a very strong team for its title defence at the world team time trial championships. Tony Martin will lead the team and will be joined by Niki Terpstra, Kristof Vandewalle, Peter Velits, Sylvain Chavanel and Michal Kwiatkowski.

In less than a week, Omega Pharma-Quick Step will defend their title as world team time trial champions in Florence and today the team has selected its roster for the event. 6 formidable time trialists are set to join forces on the 57,2km almost completely flat course.

As it was the case last year, the squad will be headlined by world time trial champion Tony Martin who will ride the event three days prior to his title defence in the individual event. The German finalized his preparations in the Vuelta from which he abandoned on stage 15.

He will be joined by 4 of the riders that helped him win the title last year as Niki Terpstra, Belgian champion Kristof Vandewalle, French champion Sylvain Chavanel and Slovakian champion Peter Velits will be back again this year. The only absentee to last year's winning team will be the injured Tom Boonen who will be replaced by time trial specialist Michal Kwiatkowski.

"The team will be perfectly captained by Tony Martin, current World Champion in this specialty, and we will also be able to count on the same structure that made up the winning team in the 2012 World Championships: Sylvain Chavanel, Niki Terpstra, Peter Velits and Kristof Vandewalle," sports director Tom Steels said. "Michal Kwiatkowski is the team's new entry. The two backup riders will be Julien Vermote and Zdenek Stybar."

Terpstra, Velits, Chavanel and Kwiatkowski all raced in Canada last week and arrived in Europe today. To get over their jetlag, they will race Wednesday's GP de Wallonie.

"With the exception of Tony Martin, the team will participate in Wednesday's GP de Wallonie, which will be an important event that will help them recover quicker from their jet lag after their return from Canada," Steels continued. "It will also be a good chance to put in a final intensive effort before flying off to Florence."

Kwiatkowski crashed out of bothe Friday's GP de Quebec and Sunday's GP de Montreal but luckily he has escaped the incidents without any serious injuries.

"Fortunately, Kwiatkowski only has a few scrapes to his right side and right elbow as consequence of yesterday's crash and Vandewalle has resolved some small problems after the crash in the Vuelta," Steels said. " On Thursday the squad will meet up in Montecatini and starting that afternoon they will be doing a workout on the route. It will be important to memorize the route and the curves immediately."

"Until now the preparation has been going well. We carried out some tests in Zolder a few weeks ago and we collected some important information by doing a recon with our technical staff. Of course, the road will ultimately decide the race, but our goal will definitely be to defend the title we captured last year using all of our forces."

Last year Omega Pharma-Quick Step were 3 seconds faster than BMC on the hilly course in Limburg. Both teams are among the favourites for his year's race as well.