This week will see the last two Ardennes classics, Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and the start of the Tour of Turkey. Thus Team Argos-Shimano will have a busy schedule.
 

Flèche Wallonne will cover a distance of 205 km, and the riders will need to conquer the famous Mur de Huy—a climb of 1,300 m with a maximum gradient of 26 percent—three times.

Sports Manager Christian Guiberteau (FRA) discusses Flèche Wallone: “This is one of the hardest classics. In addition to three climbs up the famous Mur de Huy, the riders have multiple difficult hills to tackle. Simon Geschke proved in the Brabantse Pijl and Amstel Gold Race that he has good form, but the Mur de Huy might be too steep for him. It is possible that he will achieve a good result, but we cannot count on it. The most important thing is to have good teamwork and one of our riders in the break.”

Sunday will be Liège-Bastogne-Liège, often called La Doyenne (“the oldest”). The riders will start with the “easy” part to Bastogne before tackling the second part, which contains most of the climbs, like Stockeu, Levée and La Redoute. It is a race that often rewards the most aggressive riders.

“The tactics for Liège-Bastogne-Liège will be the same as Flèche Wallone. It will be another very hard race. We hope to show some good teamwork and to have somebody in the break. If one of our leaders can excel that would be great, but we will have an aggressive strategy and see how far we can get with it,” said Christian Guiberteau.

Sunday is the start of the Tour of Turkey. The race will cover a total distance of 1,204.5 km and is expected to feature four sprint stages, two stages with uphill finishes and another two very tough stages where the climbers can battle for the win.

“Marcel Kittel is in the line-up, and we have built a strong sprint train around him,” said sports manager Marc Reef. “He had some bad luck last year, with multiple crashes and a second place, so he is eager for revenge. After his win in the Scheldeprijs he has done some good effort training at our training base in Spain. Warren Barguil will be given the freedom to excel in the general classification. He hasn’t fully regained the form he had before his crash in Paris-Nice, but he showed improvement during the last races. If he could achieve a top-10 result that would be another good step in his development and towards the direction we are working with him on.”

Argos-Shimano line-up for Flèche Wallonne:
Warren Barguil (FRA), Johannes Fröhlinger (GER), Simon Geschke (GER), Yann Huguet (FRA),
Thierry Hupond (FRA), Reinardt Janse van Rensburg (RSA), Tom Peterson (AUS) and Georg Preidler (AUT).

 
Argos-Shimano line-up for Liège-Bastogne-Liège:
Will Clarke (AUS), Tom Dumoulin (NED), Simon Geschke (GER), Patrick Gretsch (GER), Yann Huguet (FRA), Thierry Hupond (FRA), François Parisien (CAN) and Tom Peterson (AUS).

Argos-Shimano line-up for Tour of Turkey:
Nikias Arndt (GER), Bert de Backer (NED), Warren Barguil (FRA), Thomas Damuseau (FRA), Cheng Ji (CHN), Marcel Kittel (GER), Koen de Kort (NED) and Albert Timmer (NED).