Team Type 1 – Sanofi has confirmed an important wildcard, with the squad getting a green light to participate in the Tour de Suisse for the second year running.
The American Pro Continental squad will line out in the WorldTour event on June ninth, competing alongside many teams which will be using the race as their final preparation for the Tour de France.
Former Swiss national champion and 2002 Tour de France stage winner Rubens Bertogliati (pictured) is set to take part, and has been confirmed as part of Team Type 1 – Sanofi’s long list for the race.
"Last year was the first time I ever got to wear the Swiss national time trial jersey in a time trial in Switzerland, and it was a great honor to do so on the familiar streets of Lugano,” he said. “The Tour de Suisse is very hard, and I think we have the right combination of riders to do well in June.”
The wildcard is a boost to the team after it was overlooked for the Amgen Tour of California. While the American event is important in terms of sponsors and racing in front of a home crowd, the Tour de Suisse is a higher-ranking event with more WorldTour teams.
General Manager Vassili Davidenko underlined its importance to the team’s programme. "From Lago di Lugano to the Vierwaldstattersee, the best cyclists in the world all come to the Tour de Suisse in June to ride into the mountains.
“For us to be able to come back in 2012 to a race we did in 2011, on top of so many great new high-level races we have done and will do this year, is a real testament to the sporting merit of the high-caliber riders we have at Team Type 1-Sanofi, and to the strong outlook for our future in the peloton.”
Aside from Bertogliati, eleven other riders have been named on the long list for the race. They are the Italians Daniele Colli and Alessandro Bazzana, Frenchmen Julien Antomarchi, Remi Cusin and Julien El Fares, 2011 Presidential Tour of Turkey winner Aleksandr Efimkin, Jure Kocjan (Slovenia), Vegard Stake Laengen (Norway), Georg Preidler (Austria), Kiel Reijnen (USA) and the diabetic Javier Megias of Spain.
Colli and El Fares are currently eighth and nineteenth in the UCI’s Europe Tour standings, while the team is ranked 11th.
The 2012 Tour de Suisse begins on June 9th with a 7.3 kilometre time trial in Lugano and covers 1400 kilometres plus 19,177 metres of climbing over nine days.
The team’s goals include raising awareness of Type 1 diabetes and also showing that it is possible to have a healthy, active lifestyle with the disease.
CEO and Founder Phil Southerland pointed out that approximately 350,000 people or 6.5 percent of the Swiss population has diabetes.
“We're very excited at Team Type 1-Sanofi to come back to Switzerland to share our message of hope for the diabetes community,” he said.
The Tour de Suisse previously confirmed that Steve Bauer’s SpiderTech C10 squad had secured another wildcard shot.
2012 Tour de Suisse - Team Type 1-Sanofi long roster:
Julien Antomarchi - FRA
Alessandro Bazzana - ITA
Rubens Bertogliati - SUI
Daniele Colli - ITA
Remi Cusin - FRA
Aleksandr Efimkin - RUS
Julien El Fares - FRA
Jure Kocjan - SLO
Vegard Stake Laengen - NOR
Javier Megias* - ESP
Georg Preidler - AUT
Kiel Reijnen - USA
* - professional cyclist with type 1 diabetes