Bahrain Victorious kick off Tour de France podium bid

TDT | Manama                                          

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

Bahrain Victorious begin today their campaign in the 109th edition of the highly anticipated Tour de France 2022. The team are competing with an eight-member squad in the biggest professional road race in the world, which is part of this year’s Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) World Tour.

Bahrain Victorious target a podium finish in the General Classification (GC) for Australian Jack Haig and Italian Damiano Caruso. They will have the support of Slovenian Jan Tratnik, Pole Kamil Gradek, Briton Fred Wright and experienced Spaniard Luis Leon Sanchez. Slovenian Matej Mohoric and Belgian Dylan Teuns complete the roster.

Bahrain Victorious won the Team title at last year’s event, and will be hoping to be the best squad once more. Yesterday, the riders took part in the official team presentation at the race start in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The 21-stage, 3,349.8km Tour begins there today, and then ends with the infamous sprint finish on the Champs-Elysees in Paris on July 24. Bahrain Victorious’ lead sports director Gorazd Stangelj commented on the team’s overall objectives: “Our goal is to take the team’s first podium at the Tour de France, which we narrowly missed out on with [Mikel] Landa back in 2020.

“We’ve selected a really strong group of riders for the Tour. It’s a Tour with plenty of challenges with chances for wind in Denmark and then more wind in France and Cobbles. “After this, we go straight into a concentrated block of uphill finishes. I think we have got a group of riders to cover all these difficult challenges and support our leaders, Jack and Damiano, to achieve our objective.

“We will also be looking for chances with our other riders to take stage wins or help us gain time for our overall objective. I’m convinced we have a strong team for the race itself.” The Tour de France is the second of three Grand Tour events on this year’s Union Cycliste Internationale World Tour.

A Grand Tour event is a road cycling race that is one of the three major European professional stage races. The first of the season was the Giro d’Italia held in May, and the third, following the Tour de France 2022, will be Vuelta a Espana from August 19 to September 11.