Petacchi and Zabel get cheesy

The team leaders of the Italo-German squad Milram have visited the headquarters of their new sponsor Nordmilch in Bremen, Germany, earlier this week. Alongside meetings with the team management, top sprinters Alessandro Petacchi and Erik Zabel were shown the milk processing equipment of the dairy products company and introduced to its directors and employees.

"It was an interesting and pleasant day at the same time," said Petacchi. "They impressed me for the amount of work they put into their business every day. Meeting my new teammates was also excellent. Although there is the language barrier, we all made the effort of speaking English. Zabel is a great person also off the bike - I'm enthusiastic."

His German team mate Erik Zabel shared Petacchi's thoughts, saying, "I was also very impressed how many thousands of litres of milk are processed at Nordmilch each day." "It's truly enormous. To meet the rest of the squad was entertaining, too. With Petacchi, there's already a feeling."