Italian teams to GP Costa degli Etruschi

More teams have announced their line-ups for the Italian pro cycling season opener GP Costa degli Etruschi in Donoratico, Italy. ProTour team Liquigas will count on Francesco Chicchi and Murilo Fischer in the race often decided upon in a bunch sprint. Helping Chicchi and Fischer will be Valerio Agnoli, Maciej Bodnar, Alberto Curtolo, Aleksandr Kuschynski, Roberto Petito and Frederik Willems.

Continental team Nippo-Endeka-Prato Edile has been on the Etruscan coast for a few days to prepare the race. The team has designated Simone Cadamuro as leader for the race, even though the rider has been feeling a light pain in his left knee lately. "It seems to get better, though," said directeur sportif Fabrizio Fabbri. "We will have to see how the knee reacts during the race, but Cadamuro appears optimistic. We will miss Mariusz Wiesiak, who should have been the last lead-out man for Cadamuro. But he is in a pre-Olympic training camp with his polish national team."

Fabbri thus selected the following riders to accompany Cadamuro in the GP Costa degli Etruschi: Domenico Agosta, Massimo Gabbrielleschi Gabielleschi, Marino Palandri, Devis Miorin, Eddy Ratti, Yoshiyuki Shimizu and Pierpaolo Tondo.

Another Italian Continental team, Cinelli-OPD, will be lining up the following roster: Fabio Ciccarese, Gianluca Cavalli, Alfonso Falzarano, Ivan Fanelli, Jesús Perez, Alexey Shchebelin, Manuele Spadi and Bálint Szeghalmi. But its Venezuelan rider, Perez, also suffers from a painful knee. "This forced him to skip two training days," said team's directeur sportif Roberto Pelliconi. "Now, the situation seems under control. But we hope that these two forced rest days will not have any side-effects."