“I hope that I can compete with the best,” said Dries Devenyns, who won a stage as well as the overall classification at the Baloise Belgium Tour in May. “As a team, we will concentrate mostly on winning a stage at the Tour de Wallonie. And as far as that goes, we have multiple options.”

Members of IAM Cycling team have spent the last two weeks living at 2309 meters above sea level at the Albergo Ospizio Bernina at the Bernina Pass. During the days, they were training with team coach Marcello Albasini, using the “Live High, Train High” (LHTH) method.

THE OBJECTIVE: “Ensuring a stage win,” announced Kjell Carlström, directeur sportif along with Rubens Bertogliati for IAM Cycling at the Ster ZLM Tour.

Stefan Denifl will not be at the start of the Tour de Suisse, which is scheduled to take place from June 11th to June 19th.

Simon Pellaud, who comes from the Valais in the French part of Switzerland, has already been at the start line of the GP of Canton Aargau the past two years.

The Austrian cyclist Matthias Brändle left the Giro d'Italia at the end of the second week with a focus on his upcoming races. He took time to recover from his accumulated fatigue, and after taking second place in the Giro individual time trial in Chianti, he is now ready to post some more good results.

In the past two weeks, five riders from the IAM Cycling team have been using the area around the Säntis Mountain in northeastern Switzerland for their individualized training camp.

Saturday’s stage will be akin to a mini Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Among the 12 expected difficulties, the Cote de la Redoute will remind the riders of la Doyenne. Considering the challenging profile of the entire stage, it will be important to be resilient.

“Clearly our main goal is to win a stage,” explained IAM Cycling directeur sportif Kjell Carlström, who will be joined by Mario Chiesa as another team directeur sportif at the Giro d'Italia.