A mix of young and experienced riders for our only stage race of the week.
Beautiful Prague, one of the continent’s most stunning cities and home to Central Europe’s oldest university, hosts the start of this year’s Czech Tour, which gets underway with a stage whose up-and-down parcours could inspire the attackers to try and foil the sprinters’ plans at the end of the day, in Karlovy Vary.
Twenty-four hours later, the general classification will be in for a major reshuffling, as the peloton tackles the demanding summit finish of Dlouhé stráně, where big gaps are expected to open between the yellow jersey contenders. Despite the presence of some climbs on the roads to Ostrava, the penultimate day of the race should belong to the sprinters, before Sunday’s showdown on Pustevny, a climb that will be decisive for the final outcome of this 16th edition.
Having enjoyed many victories there in the past, Soudal Quick-Step will come to the start with the ambition of being again among the protagonists, with a seven-man squad consisting of 2017 winner Josef Cerny, Gil Gelders, James Knox, former Belgian Champion Yves Lampaert, last year’s stage 1 winner Luke Lamperti, Junior Lecerf, and Dries Van Gestel.
“The Czech Tour is a nice race, at the start of which we are going with a well-balanced team. We have Luke for the bunch sprints and we’ll support him on those two stages so he can be in the mix and fight for some good results. For the general classification, we’ll go with Junior; he has shown some beautiful things in stage races this season and will once again aim for a solid ranking this week”, said sports director Klaas Lodewyck.
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