Milram, Gerolsteiner and Astana announce line-ups for upcoming races

By Susan Westemeyer

Team Gerolsteiner is taking on the cobblestones and hellingen in the Omloop Het Volk on Saturday. German-Australian rider Heinrich Haussler will look to take a sprint after conquering the 11 hellingen – short but steep climbs. His teammates Stephan Schreck, Sven Krauss and Tom Stamsnijder could also put in a surprise on the 199 km around Gent.

U23 World Champion Peter Velits will lead Team Milram in the GP Lugano. The Slovakian youngster was looking forward to the "challenging" race, saying, "looking at the profile, I would say this is a good race for me." The GP Lugano consists of five laps of a 35,7 km course, for a total of 178,5 km.

Astana for Omloop Het Volk and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne: Koen de Kort, Sergei Ivanov, Benoit Joachim, Aaron Kemps, Dmitriy Muravjev, Gregory Rast, Michael Schär and Tomas Vaitkus.

Astana for the Vuelta a Murcia: Jani Brajkovic, Antonio Colom, Alberto Contador, Maxim Iglinskiy, Daniel Navarro, Benjamin Noval, Sergio Paulinho, and José Luis Rubiera.