Russian National team to ride Tour of Tasmania after winning silver medal in World Championships
Tour of Tasmania is starting from October 4 and Russian National team who won a silver medal in UCI World Championships held from March 23 to March 27, 2011 is participating in the event with high hopes.
John Craven who is the director of Tour of Tasmania admits that the presence of Russian team in the event will certainly attract more audience and will add more interest in the Tour. He mentioned that the main man behind the involvement of Russian team was
their coach Heiko Salzwedel who was always interested in participating in the event as he said, “The original contact came from Heiko who worked at the Australian Institute of Sport in the early 1990s. There were dozens of races around the world at that time
of the year that Heiko could have worked towards, but he was keen on Tasmania.”
He further added that Tour of Tasmania is becoming famous day-by-day as organisers are working hard on to improve the standards and it is not only known nationally but also internationally he stated.
The full team has not been finalised yet but four Alexei Markov, Alexander Serov, along with Ivan and Evgeny Kovalev who were the part of the team that won the silver medal earlier this year has already been shortlisted for the Tour of Tasmania.
The four selected cyclists fought for the gold medal with Australian team as they ended up five seconds short at the 4 kilometre team pursuit on March 23. Russia’s national cycling coach Heiko Salzwedel will be coaching the team of eight men in the Tour
of Tasmania and is hopeful to return home with some wins in his bag. Alexander Serov won the stage 4 while Alexei Markov dominated the second stage of Fleche du Sud held during June 9 to June 13, 2011.
Tour of Tasmania will start on October 4, 2011 with an 18.1 kilometre team time trials stage at Cascade Brewery and tour will finally conclude on October 9, 2011 with a 51.6 kilometre stage at Devonport as cyclists will travel a tough 542.7 kilometres during
the ten stages of the tour.
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