Tinkoff-Saxo heads to Switzerland to take on the six day WorldTour stage race Tour de Romandie with a squad mainly consisting of riders from the recent Ardennes Classics squad. With a roster in race shape, the team aims to deliver a strong performance in the GC with team captain Rafal Majka.
 
About the team ambitions heading into the Swiss race, team sports director Bruno Cenghialta states that Tinkoff-Saxo needs to deploy smart tactical maneuvers during the versatile race in order to support team captain Rafal Majka’s chances in the general classification.
 
“Rafal Majka is our leader and we will work around him but we will have to adapt our strategy to the prevailing situation. We will see after the first team time-trial how the other strong teams do and we will act according to that. Our aim in this race is for Majka to finish at the top 5 and we need a clever strategy to do that since the absence of very long or very steep climbs isn't the best-case scenario for him”, says Bruno Cenghialta.

For Tour de Romandie, Tinkoff-Saxo sends into action Rafal Majka, Robert Kiserlovski, Chris Anker Sorensen, Bruno Pires, Christopher Juul-Jensen, Jesper Hansen, Ivan Rovny and Pawel Poljanski.
 
During the course of the race, the riders will have to tackle 709.6km of versatile racing with two time-trials, one of them being a TTT, as well as a decisive mountain stage finishing atop the 1st category climb to Champex-Lac. According to Bruno Cenghialta, the overall leadership could very well be decided on the final ITT.
 
"I would say that the race course fits quite well the type of riders we have in order to have a good result. However, the climbs are neither too hard nor too long, so this race will also be quite fast. We will have to be attentive to race well and take advantage of all the opportunities we might encounter. The parcours is similar to last year's, where everything was decided in the final stage. We saw that the climbs weren't very difficult and it wasn't here that the GC was decided. As a result we have to follow the opportunities when they arise to get the best result”, comments Bruno Cenghialta, who notes that Chris Juul-Jensen and Ivan Rovny could play the part as potential wildcards on breakaway stages:
 
“We have two riders, Chris Juul-Jensen and Ivan Rovny, who are in good form and we could use them in the stages suited for breakaways. That way we can have some outsiders for the team and they have the legs to do that.
  
“Naturally, one of the crucial days comes on stage 5 with three 1st category climbs while on stages 2 to 4 all climbs are of 2nd and 3rd category. Still, stage 5 isn't a super difficult stage, where Rafal could gain a big advantage, so we have to make sure we reach that day in a good position overall”, finishes Bruno Cenghialta.