By Hedwig Kröner
The German city of Hamburg will be gearing up this weekend to celebrate the HEW-Cyclassics' 10th anniversary, which has moved up from the World Cup to being a ProTour race, thus attracting even more top participants. This year, the traditionally bumpy course takes a new turn into the countryside south of the German metropolis, peaking with the moderate climb of Langenrehm after 58 km. It then maintains the circuit loop established in the 2004 edition with a view to make life harder for the sprinters, making the bunch climb the Waseberg (a 600 metre wall of up to 16%) four times - but only the first three passes counting for the mountains classification.
Fortunately, this won't prevent the international sprinting elite from trying their luck. Alessandro Petacchi (Fassa Bortolo) will be in Hamburg after a longer break from racing and might be fresher than Tour de France than the rest. Cofidis sprinter Stuart O'Grady will be looking forward to defend his title from last year, as well as having something to prove after the Tour.
Live coverage
Cyclingnews will be covering the 10th HEW-Cyclassics-Cup live starting 15:00 CEST/11:00 EDT (USA East)/8:00 PDT (USA West)/23:00 AEST (Australia East).
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