BMC Racing Team to kick off its Classics season at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad 2012
BMC Racing Team had a quite start to its 2012 campaign, the side only managed to claim the Combative classification at the Tour of Oman.
Belgian cyclist Klaas Lodewyck helped the side with its only success of the new season.
The main goals for the American side are towards the later parts of the year, as it is targeting the Grand Tours, with the Tour de France as its chief objective.
Previous winner of the French Grand Tour, Cadel Evans will try his luck for the second overall victory at the race and he will be accompanied by some of the star cyclists hired by the team for its 2012 crusade.
As many as seven cyclists signed Gavin Chilcott’s team for the new season. Thor Hushovd, Philippe Gilbert, Marco Pinotti, Tejay van Garderen, Klaas Lodewyck, Adam Blythe and Steve Cummings are the new inclusions in the team for the season ahead.
While Evans will target the Tour de France, Gilbert and Hushovd will represent the team at the classics.
The classics season is starting from Sunday with the Belgian race, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and both Hushovd (2009) and Gilbert (2006 and 2008) have succeeded during the previous editions of the race.
The Belgian will make his way through to the record books if he succeeds this year.
He will join Joseph Bruyère (1974, 1975, and 1980), Ernest Sterckx (1952, 1953, and 1956) and Peter van Petegem (1997, 1998, and 2002), as a three-time winner of the race.
The 29-year-old is positive to receive the honours on Sunday, "For me, it is important to be here in Belgium, with the national champion's jersey, I will see how the race will go Saturday. It's not the most important race, but it is still a nice one," he said.
He continued, "We have a strong team, it will be really helpful because the main thing here is to have many guys remaining in the group close to the finish and I think one of us can be close to the win".
Hushovd will ride the event for the eight time and it will be his first appearance with Team BMC.
He is looking ahead to ride his first race with Gilbert and is optimistic to help the team with the best results on Sunday.
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