Having been left out of both the Giro and the Tour, the German Team NetApp-Endura secured a place in the final grand tour of the year when organizers Unipublic handed out the wild cards today. The team is excited to line up in its second grand tour and feels confident that they can make a few surprise on a very hard course.

Team NetApp had their grand tour debut in last year's Giro d'Italia and the team delivered a strong and visible performance throughout the three weeks of racing. Having merged with the British NetApp squad prior to this season the German team hoped to repeat their performance in one of year's three grand tours.

However, the team was left empty-handed when Giro organizers RCS decided to favour the Italian Androni, Bardiani and Vini Fantini teams and the Colombia squad when they handed out their wild cards in January. However, the team was very close to get an invitation and in the internal vote of the committee two members were in favour of the Germans.

Last weekend the team was left disappointed when tour organizers ASO handed out their three wild cards to the Franch Europcar, Sojasun and Cofidis teams but once again the team came close to an invitation. Six teams were on a shortlist published in March and NetApp-Endura and the Swiss IAM team were the only foreign teams to make the list.

Today the team learned that their quest to participate in a grand tour ended up successful when Vuelta organizers Unipublic decided to invite the German team alongside Cofidis and the Spanish Caja Rural squad. Once again the battle was fierce as the unusually large field of ProTeams had reduced the number of wild cards to just three.

Unsurprisingly, general manager Ralph Denk was a relieved man.

"We always believed firmly in the fact that we will ride a Grand Tour this season, too," he said. "At the Giro we were the only team without Italian roots to receive votes and at the Tour we were on the short-list of candidates. After we came up just short two times before, things finally came together with an invitation to the Vuelta. The whole team is excited and can’t wait to race the Vuelta. I appreciate that the organizers of the Vuelta invited a young team as we are. We are a new generation of successful riders who need to compete in the world’s best races to further develop.”

This year's Vuelta route is extremely hard with no less than 13 mountain stages on the menu. Nonetheless, Denk thinks that his team has all chances to be competitive.

"The Vuelta is very demanding this year," he explained. "But I think that is good. Because we have always had our biggest upsets when the challenges were particularly large. The team's development is simply enormous since the Giro last year. Therefore I am confident that we will justify the invitation to the Vuelta with a great performance."

The team is expected to feature the young stage race talent Leopold König as well as stage hunters Jan Barta and Bartosz Huzarski in their line-up who were both second in stages of last year's Giro. The teamalso has a strong sprint train with the likes of Roger Kluge, Daniel Schorn, Blaz Jarc, Scott Thwaites, Russell Downing and Ralf Matzka all potential candidates in the race's flatter stages.