Tinkoff-Saxo has picked the six riders that will represent the team at the World Championships Team Time Trial Sunday in Richmond, Virginia. With an ambition of fighting for the fiercely rivaled top spot on the podium, the squad includes three-time World ITT champion Michael Rogers and team star Peter Sagan. 
 
With the group fully assembled in Richmond ahead of several days of meticulous preparation, team sports director Sean Yates unveils the six riders that will represent Tinkoff-Saxo at the prestigious World Championships TTT.
 
“Our line-up consists of Michael Rogers, Peter Sagan, Maciej Bodnar, Michael Valgren, Christopher Juul-Jensen and Manuele Boaro. It’s a complicated task to select the squad for the Worlds TTT, as it’s late in the season and it’s critical that the riders aren’t fatigued before an all-out effort like this. It’s obvious that these six riders, together with the likes of Bennati and Contador, are the strongest time trialists on our team and we felt that they were the best at this point”, explains Sean Yates before going into details with the team’s approach to the 38.8km course:
 
“We have a solid squad and they are, not least, motivated. Bodnar is a three-time Polish ITT champion, Rogers has loads of experience and won the Worlds ITT three times, Juul-Jensen is the current Danish ITT champion and during the season we’ve finished 2nd in two Grand Tour TTT’s. However, setting a goal is tricky but it’s undoubtedly to do the fastest possible ride. There are no clear favorites and, if we stick to the strategy, we got a chance. BMC, Orica and Etixx are surely some of the teams that will prove hard to beat but we want to muster in there”.

With the esteemed TTT taking place in late September, reaching Richmond with six riders in the best possible shape off the back of a long season was not without difficulties.
 
“For us, this TTT has been a long term project and a major objective from the start of the season. But it was sort of changed after several injuries. Sagan got knocked out of the Vuelta, Bennati will not take part, as he isn’t recovered yet after the Vuelta, where he stayed and supported Majka and Bodnar crashed in California and we wanted him at the Vuelta to do at least one Grand Tour effort. But doing the Vuelta doesn’t allow for full recovery. Originally, we wanted them to do the Canadian races together, so it hasn’t been the optimum preparation that we were looking for. However, the boys are acclimatizing well and they have the qualities to do a blazing TTT”, comments Sean Yates and adds about the 38.8km predominantly flat effort ahead:
 
“We gathered in the beginning of this week to reset the body clock, adapt and freshen up. This effort requires careful planning – the guys have to train at the right intensity, not rest too much and we have to test and select the right equipment in order to use the power we develop to the largest and most efficient extent. It’s going to be a classic World Championships TTT with 38.8 mostly flat kilometers, a real out-and-back race where we will see an intense speed. We want the guys to ramp up the intensity during the next days and then hope that they all have a great feeling come Sunday”.