GreenEDGE ramp up European campaign

New Australian cycling team GreenEDGE will ramp up the start of their European campaign over the next week with important stages races in France and Italy.

Tour Down Under winner Simon Gerrans will lead the team from Sunday in the eight-day Paris-Nice race.

Matt Goss will be a key GreenEDGE rider from March 7-13 at the Tirreno-Adriatico in Italy, where compatriot Cadel Evans (BMC) is the defending champion.

It will be a big lead-up race for Goss ahead of his title defence at the Milan-San Remo classic on March 17.

Milan-San Remo is the first big one-day classic of the year and also the first major European objective for GreenEDGE.

Australia’s first top-level professional cycling team had a solid debut in January when Gerrans starred, winning an epic elite road race at the national titles and then taking out the Tour Down Under for the second time.

Luke Durbridge also gave a glimpse of his potential as a road rider when he won the Australian time trial championship.

But the GreenEDGE men are yet to crack their first overseas win.

That is in contrast to the GreenEDGE-AIS women’s team, who have taken their domination of the Australian road season to more big results in Europe and New Zealand.

“We want a stage win,” GreenEDGE sports director Matt White said of the Paris-Nice race.

“We’re obviously not going into Paris-Nice with ambitions on the overall.

“This sets up our eight guys to take individual chances on any given stage.

“There will be a lot of opportunity during the week that arise from breakaways or select front groups coming to the finish together.”

Gerrans in particular will use Paris-Nice to help build his form ahead of the Ardennes Classics, where he aims to score a breakthrough win.

Fellow Australians Simon Clarke, Matt Wilson, Leigh Howard and Wes Sulzberger are also on the Paris-Nice roster, along with Swiss Michael Albasini, Jens Keukeleire (Belgium) and Aidis Kruopis (Lithuania).

Joining Goss for Tirreno-Adriatico will be compatriots Baden Cooke, Stuart O’Grady and Cameron Meyer, plus Dutchmen Sebastian Langeveld and Jens Mouris, Canadian Svein Tuft and Tomas Vaitkus (Lithuania).

Meyer was originally going to ride in Paris-Nice, but switched races mainly because Tirreno-Adriatico features a team time trial.

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