This weekend international racing returns to Europe with the opening spring classic of the season, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad kicking of the northern European race calendar in Belgium.

Team Stölting Service Group returns to Europe after a strong start to its racing campaign in Qatar and Oman where the riders put the past months of hard work in training and preparation into practice. 

Heading the line-up for OHN this Saturday is Gerald Ciolek (GER) who continued to build his early season form in Oman last week, and he is joined, amongst others, by road captain Michael Reihs (DEN) and sprinter Michael Carbel (DEN).

André Steensen will be the team's sports director. He comments: "We're looking forward to racing at Het Nieuwsblad, which kicks off the cobbled classics season. It’s always a race with a lot of prestige because it’s the first cobble race of the season, and so we hope to start well and leave our mark on the race.

"We come to the race with quite a young team, but with the experience from Reihs and Ciolek we’ll try our best to get a result. For the young riders it’s also about taking in the atmosphere of the cobbles, learning and getting to know the roads because this plays a huge part in being successful in these races."

RIDERS
Gerald Ciolek (GER)
Alexander Kamp (DEN)
Alex Kirsch (LUX)
Mads Pedersen (DEN)
Michael Reihs (DEN)
Sven Reutter (GER)
Michael Carbel (DEN)
Jonas Tenbrock (GER)

The European racing continues on Sunday with the one-day GP Lugano in Switzerland. An undulating 186km parcours is the order of the day, and it will be the start of the 2016 campaign for Lennard Kämna (GER), joining five riders with racing in their legs from Qatar and Oman.

Joining Kämna are the experienced riders Linus Gerdemann (GER), Rasmus Guldhammer (DEN) and Fabian Wegmann (GER), along with Romain Lemarchand (FRA) and Christian Mager (GER) who both rode strong races in Oman last week. 

Sports director Jochen Hahn says: "If the weather forecast holds true, it will be a race in continuous rain at 6 degrees Celsius; only the toughest will survive that. We have five riders who recently returned from Oman, they should be in good form - but they'll have to adapt to the weather. Everybody will get his chance in the race. Lennard Kämna is doing his first race of the season and will mostly have domestique duties."