Interest has been drumming up for Thursday’s Trofeo Sel Salines, with the unusual change to a team time trial instead of a road race, incentivising several teams to bring top riders as a key testing opportunity for this year’s Tour de France, which opens with a 19km TTT in Barcelona.
Remco Evenepoel is there with Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and UAE Team Emirates-XRG have brought many of the riders who could support Tadej Pogačar in July. So it begs the question, why isn’t every top WorldTour team starting in the Challenge Mallorca race?
“The date and time didn’t work out well for us, because it’s so early in the season,” explained Visma’s Head of Racing, Grischa Niermann, to Wielerflits.
“This year we will again be going on an altitude training camp in February with a group of riders, instead of racing. The team time trial is a good move by the Challenge Mallorca, but unfortunately, we won’t be there.”
Paris-Nice is the obvious next choice to test specifics for the Tour’s opening day. The longstanding French one-week race also follows the same new timing format to the Tour – where each rider gets their own individual time and the team’s times are stopped by the first rider stopping the line, not the fourth, as has long been the format.
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