Milram, Astana and Barloworld in Italy

Team Milram will send three veterans and three Italian stagiaires to the Giro di Romagna on Sunday. The race runs 200 km through northern Italy. Milram's team for the Giro di Romagna includes Dennis Haueisen, Ralf Grabsch, Andrey Grivko, Luca Barla, Luca Orlandi, and Efrem Salvi

Astana will also take to the Italian races this weekend, sending a strong team to the The 57th Coppa Placci, a 197 km long race between Imola and San Marino, on Saturday September 8. Eight riders, including Paolo Savoldelli, who hasn't raced since the Tour de France, and Spaniards Antonio Colom and Daniele Navarro, Swiss rider Thomas Frei, Frenchman Julien Mazet and Kazakhs Alexey Kolessov, Dimitri Muravyev and Yevgeny Sladkov will make up the team. The same line-up will take part in the Giro della Romagna on Sunday.

Team Barloworld will send a squad directed by Valerio Tebaldi, with Pedro Arreitunandia and Felix Cardenas leading the team in both races, while Kastantisin Siutsou will focus only on the Coppa Placci and Alex Efimkin only on the Giro di Romagna. The rest of the team will include James Perry, Gianpaolo Cheula, Fabrizio Guidi, Paolo Longo Borghini and Ramiro Rincon ­ the 20 year-old stagiaire from Colombia who made his debut at the recent Trittico Lombardo.