Team News: CCC at Milan San Remo

This Saturday: Milan San Remo – Greg Van Avermaet searching for second Monument victory at Milan-San Remo

Team News: CCC at Milan San Remo

Greg Van Avermaet is set to headline CCC Team’s roster for the first Monument of the season, Milan-San Remo, and will be backed by the core Classics team.

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On the back of solid racing at Tirreno-Adriatico, Van Avermaet will be joined by Michael Schär, Gijs Van Hoecke, Nathan Van Hooydonck, Guillaume Van Keirsbulck, Łukasz Wiśniowski, and Alessandro De Marchi, who showed strong form at Paris-Nice.

At 291 kilometers long, Milan-San Remo, known as ‘La Primavera’, is one of the most unpredictable races on the calendar, Sports Director Fabio Baldato said. “The decisive points of Milan-San Remo are the same as usual. The Cipressa climb and descent and the Poggio climb and descent are the points where the difference can be made and as we saw last year, Nibali did a great move and avoided a bunch sprint. Most of the time it is a sprint with 30 or 40 riders, but that is the nice thing about the race, it is open for everyone to try something,” Baldato explained.

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“Greg Van Avermaet is our clear leader, he is our caption and is looking really good, but we also need to be ready to react to different situations. Alessandro De Marchi is coming in from Paris-Nice with strong form and the guys from Tirreno-Adriatico are also in good shape so we need to be smart and be ready to take every opportunity we get in the race.”

Van Avermaet, who will line up for his 12th consecutive edition and has previously finished in fifth place, is looking forward to the challenge on Saturday. “We all know that despite the length of Milan-San Remo, it can be an easy race to finish but one of the hardest races to win. It is also one of the most open races in that anyone has a chance if they are still there on the Poggio. I’ve been in the top ten on two occasions and I know I can do a good performance, particularly if we race hard as I can do a good sprint after a long, hard race. Anything can happen at a race like Milan-San Remo so I will give everything I have on Saturday,” Van Avermaet said.

“I felt really good at Tirreno-Adriatico and I take a lot of confidence from the legs I had at the end of those long stages we did there. It was the perfect preparation race for the upcoming Classics so I think the whole team benefited from the long stages and difficult parcours.”

Milan-San Remo

Rider roster: Alessandro De Marchi (ITA), Michael Schär (SUI), Greg Van Avermaet (BEL), Gijs Van Hoecke (BEL), Nathan Van Hooydonck (BEL), Guillaume Van Keirsbulck (BEL), Łukasz Wiśniowski (POL)

Sports Directors: Fabio Baldato (ITA), Gabriele Missaglia (ITA)