Without attempting to sell the rest of the Milram-squad short, the teams results mainly depend on Zabel and Petacchi. How that can turn into a problem was revealed last season when Stanga’s riders won, besides Lampre-Fondital and Bouygues Telecom, the least ProTour-races. Only three victories, coming from Petacchi (1) and Zabel (2). Because of a heavy injury half the team was disabled, getting good old Zabel even more eager to win the flowers than usual.


To deal with this problem the team management started a search for additional quality within its budget and found Astarloa, the fast Lancaster and Sieberg and young talent Terpstra. Very nice broad additions to the team, however with Visconti, Iglinskiy, Becke and Cadamuro leaving the team still seems to remain a two-man squad.


Agreed, Celestino and Astarloa have proven to be able to win one day races in the past, but both appear to be at the end of their valuable lifetime. The big package of fast riders like Siedler, Velo, Rigotto, Lorenzetto, Ongarato, Poitschke and many more isn’t world class and will have to sacrifice their chances when Zabel or Petacchi is racing as well. The way the team is built for a race also shows that it focuses on these two main men, with an average of eight helpers, neglecting other talents to flourish. Ghisalberti is a decent climber, Grivko has many talents and Dyudya is a world class chaser.


The paralysing effect of a team build around Petacchi and Zabel has made sure that the other members of the team don’t know any better than to launch their sprint, preventing them from excelling in anything else. The dairy sponsor better pray that Petacchi and Zabel will be more successful this year than last year, even though the absence of one of them would probably be better for the rest of the team.


New:
Igor Astarloa (Barloworld), Brett Lancaster (Ceramiche Panaria), Marcel Sieberg (Wiesenhof), Sebastian Schwager (Thüringer Energie Team), Niki Terpstra (Ubbink-Syntec), Luca Barla (neo)


Departed:
Maarten den Bakker (Skil-Shimano), Alessandro Vanotti (Liquigas), Maxim Iglinskiy (Astana), Giovanni Visconti (Quickstep), Daniel Becke (Thüringer Energie Team), Simone Cadamuro, Daniel Musiol (Team Wiesenhof)