More California squads announced

Mark Zalewski, North American Editor

With the Tour of California days away, more teams are releasing their final rosters for the race. The Bissell Pro Cycling team will be led by two riders, Tom Zirbel and Ben Jacques-Maynes – while the Slipstream-Chipotle-H30 team will be bringing a strong American contingent.

Jacques-Maynes started off strong last year finishing third in the prologue when the team was known as the Priority Health team. Director sportif Glen Mitchell said that new additions to the team this year made for a more challenging selection process. “While selection is always a tough process, the depth and determination of this squad made that process all the more difficult,” said Mitchell. “We have a unique and talented group that work incredibly well together who are all able to contribute to a race of this caliber, but we have some specific riders whose peak form is targeted down the road.”

While the Slipstream-Chipotle-H30 team added a lot of European firepower to its roster, only one of them will be riding on the eight-man team in California. David Millar, who will be looking to see how his time trial position has progressed from wind tunnel training will be joined be a lot of potential GC contenders. Tom Danielson, David Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde all have ridden in the main role in their careers.