Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara (right) of Radioshack Leopard team cycles during a training session in Doha, Qatar, yesterday. The Tour of Qatar begins today.
DOHA: Top British cyclist Mark Cavendish and Swiss giant Fabian Cancellara will be looking to gather serious early season momentum when they kick-off their campaigns at the six-stage Tour of Qatar which begins today.
Cavendish - who won two stages in Qatar last year - will be leading the charge for Omega-Pharma Quick Step (OPQS), a team that will miss the defending champion Tom Boonen this year.
Cancellara - a time-trial specialist of considerable repute - will start his Qatar campaign with RadioShack Leopard today when the riders brace up for the first stage.
Cavendish, winner of an astonishing 23 stages at the Tour de France, has been welcomed with open arms by the Omega-Pharma Quick Step for the six-day race.
Boonen, a four-time winner in Qatar, is still recovering from a minor operation to resolve a septic infection in his elbow, according to reports.
“This year he (Tom Boonen) can’t attend, so we will focus our attention on other riders, and of course Mark Cavendish,” Wilfried Peeters, the sporting director at Quick-Step, told the team’s website.
“We are happy to have a rider like Mark with us, who has already won stages (in Qatar). He knows the parcours and the conditions we will find in Qatar,” Peeters added.
“We will work for him to give him the best situation for the sprint. But we also have other riders who can do well in Qatar,” he said.
Boonen, the sprint star, has won 20 stages ever since the race was launched in 2002.
Cavendish, who arrived on Friday night, showed sparkling form by winning the opening stage of the Tour de San Luis in Argentina.
Zdenek Stybar will replace Boonen who will also miss next week’s Tour of Oman.
Also in the team are Iljo Keisse, Niki Terpstra, Matteo Trentin, Guillaume Van Keirsbulck, Stijn Vandenbergh and Martin Velits.
Peeters said: “OPQS specialises in these kinds of races in the desert, with a lot of wind. Mark (Cavendish) can benefit from the experience of the team on this kind of parcour.”
Meanwhile, Cancellara is one of eight cyclists set to ride for RadioShack Leopard this week in Qatar.
Other members of the RadioShack Leopard team include Stijn Devolder (Belgium), Tony Gallopin (France), Markel Irizar (Spain), Nelson Oliveira (Portugal), Yaroslav Popovych (Ukraine), Gregory Rast (Switzerland) and Hayden Roulston (New Zealand).
Cancellara, the 2008 Beijing Games champion in the men’s road time trial, will be utilising the conditions in Qatar to get into the right kind of condition for the spring classics campaign.
Cancellara, 31, will be a strong contender for a win in the 14 km time trial tomorrow.
Other sprinters and classics rider in action in Qatar include Baden Cooke (Orica-GreenEdge), Daniele Bennati (Team Saxo-Tinkoff), Russell Downing (NetApp-NetApp) Elia Viviani (Team Cannondale), Andrea Guardini (Astana Pro Team), John Degenkolb (Argos-Shimano), Heinrich Haussler (IAM Cycling), Edvald Boasson Hagen and Geraint Thomas (Team Sky) and Taylor Phinney (BMC Racing Team).
Eighteen teams will contest the 2013 race.
The participating teams are a mix of World Tour squads and Professional Continental outfits.
A bunch of riders from Japan are also part of the Tour this year. Each squad will field eight riders.
Sky squad includes Edvald Boasson Hagen, Bernhard Eisel and Brits Luke Rowe, Ian Stannard and Geraint Thomas.
The first stage in Qatar starts with a 145km dash from Katara Cultural Village in the heart of the city to Dukhan Beach in the west of the country.
The 732.2km Tour of Qatar ends on February 8.
THE PENINSULA
