24 teams to take on Tour d’Azerbaidjan

6 March 2015 18:01 (UTC+04:00)

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By Amina Nazarli

The international stage race 2015 Tour d’Azerbaidjan will be held on May 6-10, 2015

At least 24 teams from around the world will tackle the competition, the race announced today. The line-up so far features four Professional Continental teams, 16 Continental teams, and four national teams.

Drapac Professional Cycling (Australia), Androni Giocattoli (Italy), RUSVELO (Russia) and Team Novonordisk (USA) will represent the Professional Continental ranks. Synergy Baku Cycling Project, the homeland team, will lead the Continental teams.

Others are Adria-Mobil (Slovenia), An Post-Chain Reaction (Ireland), LEOPARD Development Team (Luxembourg), Giant-Champion System (China), Tusad (Romania), MLP Team Bergstrasse (Germany), Banska Bystrica (Slovakia), Torku (Turkey), CCN Cycling Team (Laos), Hrinkow Advarics (Austria), Parkhotel Valkenburg (Netherlands), Alpha-Baltic-Unitymarathons.com (Latvia), Keith-Mobil (Spain), Dukla Praha (Czech Republic) and MINSK Cycling Team (Belarus).

National teams will represent Hungary, Estonia, Greece and Kazakhstan.

The 24 teams of 6 riders each will form a peloton of 144 riders, with a possible 25th team bringing the total to 150. They will face a five stage race covering various parts of Azerbaidjan from May 6 to 10.

“We are going to have a lot of strong teams at the Tour this year,” said Farhad Aliyev, General Secretary of the Azerbaijan Cycling Federation. “Among those strong teams may be South Africa’s MTN-Qhubeka, we are still awaiting their final response.”

Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli