Teams announce line-ups for the week

Team Quick Step is sending its riders in various directions this week, with Paolo Bettini leading the Italian group and Tom Boonen the Netherlands group. Bettini, Davide Malacarne, Dmitry Grabovskiy, Alessandro Proni, Leonardo Scarselli, Kevin Seeldraeyers, Matteo Tosatto and Giovanni Visconti will ride the Tre Valli Varesine. The riders wuill face 198 kilometres around Varese, Italy, on Tuesday, August 19.

On the next day, Malacarne, Grabovsky, Proni, Scarselli, Tossatto and Visconti will be joined by Alexander Efimkin, and Davide Vigano for the Coppa Agostini, 194 km starting and ending in Lissone, Italy.

From August 20 to 27, Tom Boonen will lead Quick Step in the ENECO Tour in the Netherlands. He will be supported by Wilfried Cretskens, Steven De Jongh, Stijn Devolder, Kevin Hulsmans, Sebastien Rosseler, Gert Steegmans, and Maarten Wynants.

Also taking on the seven-stage ProTour race will be Astana, with Koen de Kort, Thomas Frei, Sergey Ivanov, Aaron Kemps, Berik Kupeshov, Steve Morabito and Andrey Zeits. AG2R will send Christophe Edaleine, Yuriy Krivtsov, Laurent Mangel, Jean Patrick Nazon, Cedric Pineau, Stéphane Poulhiès , Jean Charles Senac and Stijn Vandenbergh. Milram will be led by Marco Velo, with Dennis Haueisen, Elia Rigotto, Enrico Poitschke, Fabio Sabatini, Luca Barla, Markus Eichler and Artur Gajek.

Over in France, Astana and AG2R will also be riding the Tour du Limousin, August 19-22. Andreas Klöden will lead Astana there, supported by Assan Bazayev, Roman Kireyev, Julien Mazet, Benjamín Noval, Sérgio Paulinho, Gregory Rast and Tomas Vaitkus. AG2R will feature Sylvain Calzati, Philip Deignan, John Gadret, Tanel Kangert, Julien Loubet, Lloyd Mondroy, Ludovic Turpin and Alexandre Usov.

Milram will be sending a young team featuring three stagiaires to the Regio Tour in southern Germany, August 20-24. Björn Schröder will be captain for the team which features Dominik Roels and Sebastian Schwager, as well as the stagiaires Arne Hassink, Mitja Schulter and Simon Geschke.(SW)