Amets Txurruka (1982) will face three training camps in Italy, Spain and South Africa before debuting with Orica-GreenEDGE next season which marks his return to the WorldTour after three years at Caja Rural

The Basque rider will have his first contact with some of his new teammates next week in Varese (Italy) from December 2-5 to pass the relevant medical tests, receive new equipment and define his schedule. The Australian team has recently gathered in Canberra. Orica-GreenEDGE and the Australian Insitute of Sport (AIS) have their European headquarters in the region of Lombardy.

In the new year, Txurruka will participate in the training camp in Oliva in the region of Safor in Valencia, from the 10th to the 24th of January. The big news is the altitude traing camp in South Africa during the month of February in a small town in the province of Mpumalanga, 250 kilometers from Johannesburg and close to the border to Swaziland and Mozambique. Last year, the Australian team also headed to Africa and recorded a popular video there

The landscape in the Drakensberg Mountains, the highest mountains in South Africa with heights above 3,000 meters on the border to Lesotho, is unique and includes a nature park. It also is an area rich on minerals and has several power plants. New teammate Rubén Plaza will join Txurruka in Varese, Oliva and Mpumalanga.

Txurruka will make his debut in the new colours in Marcs. "I will start pretty late," he tells BiciCiclismo. For now, he has "a draft" of his schedule. I does include the Tour of the Basque Country that starts close to his home in Etxebarria. "Maybe I will start at Tirreno or at a couple of classics. Then it will be Catalunya, Estella (GP Miguel Indurain), Basque Country, maybe some of the Ardennes classics or Romandie. Everything is on track to go to the Giro." After the meeting in Varese, he will know more.

Txurruka wore orange with Euskaltel-Euskadi from 2007-2012 after debuting with Barloworld in 2006 and from 2013 he has been withCaja Rural-RGA. Just turned 33, he will share his experience with younger Orica-GreenEDGE teammates, especially with Esteban Chaves and brothers Adam and Simon Yates. He has done six editions of the Tour de France, seven Vueltas a Espana and one Giro d'Italia. In 2015 he achieved two victories, a stage in the Tour of Norway and a stage of the Tour de Beauce after breaking his collarbone for the sixth time in the Etoile de Bessègges. Later he crashed at the Circuit de Getxo which hampered him in the second part of the year and forced him to abandon the Vuelta.