Bora-Argon 18 aims to improve in second Milan-San Remo start

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On the heels of being invited to this year's Tour de France, Bora-Argon 18 has secured wildcard invitations from RCS Sport to race at Tirreno-Adriatico, and one-day classics Milan-San Remo and Il Lombardia in 2015. The German Professional Continental team are currently at a training camp in Spain to prepare for the season ahead.

“I am pleased that RCS has once again completely taken our wishes into consideration,” said the team’s manager Ralph Denk. “We received wildcards for every race for which we applied. Tirreno-Adriatico is our most important tour in the spring. The race is suited to sprinters and climbers as well as rouleurs and time trial specialists. We will certainly use it to test the core of our possible Tour de France selection.”

Appliance makers Bora and Canadian bike manufacturer Argon 18 announced that they would take over as title sponsors of the team NetApp-Endura last year at the Tour de France, where Leopold König placed seventh overall.

Earlier last season, they debuted at Milan-San Remo but without the same success and they are hoping to improve on that performance with a second shot at the Italian Classic. This is also the team’s third consecutive invitation to Il Lombardia, where Tiago Machado was the highest placed in 18th last year.

König has since moved up to Team Sky and Machado now races for Katusha but the team has promising riders in climbers Jan Barta and Dominik Nerz, among others.

“Being cycling monuments, Milan-San Remo in the spring and Il Lombardia in the fall are the cornerstones of our Classics calendar,” Denk said. “It will be only our second start in Milan, and we are therefore particularly keen to make a good impression. We have improved every year in Lombardy, and we want to take it up a notch this time as well.”

Although they were not invited to the Giro d'Italia, they did receive an invitation from Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO) to take part in the Tour de France. ASO also invited them to compete in the Critérium du Dauphiné.

Bora-Argon 18 have united at an opening team training camp on one of the Balearic Islands in Spain in order to prepare for the upcoming season.

Bora-Argon 18 for 2015: Shane Archbold, Jan Bárta, Phil Bauhaus, Sam Bennette, Cesare Benedetti, Emanuel Buchmann, Zakkari Dempster, Bartosz Huzarski, Patrick Konrad, Ralf Matzka, Jose Mendes, Dominik Nerz, Christoph Pfingsten, Cristiano Salerno, Andreas Schillinger, Daniel Schorn, Michael Schwarzmann, Björn Thurau, Scott Thwaites and Paul Voss.