Milram hits German, Italian championships

This Sunday the national title road races will be held in Italy and Germany, as in most European countries. Milram has announced the teams for the respective races in those countries.

Nine team members will start the German championships, while six will be heading to Italy.

National championships have their own laws, underlined by the recent surprises in the German championships. "Title races are always difficult to figure out. In this respect, Germany doesn't differ from Italy," confirmed Oscar Pellicioli, Milram's directeur sportif for the race on the difficult Wiesbaden, Germany, course.

Pelliciolli continued, "Most of the teams are riding with completely different tactics than usual. This often leads to surprises. We saw this the past two years in Germany. However, we are confident that Milram will be in the mix for the title."

The days that the German championships were the Telekom/T-Mobile club championships are indeed over, as the wins of Gerald Ciolek and Dirk Müller have shown the past two years.

The team for the German race will be comprised of Erik Zabel, Marcel Sieberg, Ralf Grabsch, Christian Knees, Enrico Poitschke, Sebastian Schwager, Sebastian Siedler, Martin Müller and Björn Schröder.

At the Italian Championships in Genova, Alessandro Cortinovis, Sergio Ghisalberti, Alberto Ongarato, Elia Rigotto, Fabio Sacchi and Carlo Scognamiglio are going to start.

The following team members are also riding in their country's championships: Niki Terpstra in Holland, Volodymyr Diudia and defending time trial champion Andrey Grivko in the Ukraine and Matej Jurco, also last year's time trial winner, in Slovakia.