ORICA-GreenEDGE will target stage wins with Tour de Korea champion Caleb Ewan at the Tour de Pologne beginning this Sunday.
Ewan returns to racing after a training stint to kick-start the second part of his neo-pro year with the Australian outfit. His first half featured ten professional victories, including four stages and the overall in Korea.
“We are going to be targeting stage wins, predominantly with Caleb, at this year’s Tour,” sport director Matt Wilson said. “We hope there will be four or five opportunities during the week.
“The earlier stages are the most likely with all stages up to at least day four looking good for a bunch sprint.”
An extremely experienced ORICA-GreenEDGE outfit, including road captain Mathew Hayman and lead out riders Mitch Docker and Brett Lancaster, will guide the 21-year-old.
“We have a really good team here to support Caleb,” Wilson continued.
“We have strong guys to do the work on the front if need be and then for the lead out we have the experience of Lancaster and Docker. Add Hayman to that, and it’s a pretty solid line up.
“With this team, we’d be disappointed if we couldn’t pull of a stage.”
Completing the line up is Simon Clarke, Christian Meier, Damien Howson and Ivan Santaromita.
A 25km time trial to conclude the seven-day Tour de Pologne looks decisive for general classification. Despite winning in 2013 courtesy of Pieter Weening, ORICA-GreenEDGE will not give specific focus to an overall result.
“The general classification is a bit of a gamble,” Wilson said. “With the final time trial and a couple of intermediate medium mountain stages, there is not really one big general classification day.
“That makes it hard to predict and we don’t really have a specialist for that format at this year’s event.
“We will have a couple of guys sniffing around, but it’s not the priority or the major goal.”
ORICA-GreenEDGE at Tour de Pologne (2-8 August):
Simon Clarke
Mitch Docker
Caleb Ewan
Mathew Hayman
Damien Howson
Brett Lancaster
Christian Meier
Ivan Santaromita
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