The Belgian Jürgen Van Den Broeck makes his season debut at the Tour de San Luis.

The organization of the Tour de San Luis can be very pleased. In this seventh edition a bunch of big names stand at the start: Alberto Contador, Joaquim Rodriguez, Vincenzo Nibali (winner in 2010) and Mark Cavendish. For the climbers this Argentinian stage race is ideal to get an idea of their condition at this point. The first two stages can be called flat, but everything that follows is for the climbers, with an individual time trial at day 4. Ten WorldTour teams will start, eight Pro Continental teams and five continental teams.

Also for Jurgen Van den Broeck the Tour de San Luis is a first moment to see where he stands. In the pretty tough race of one week he found an ideal start of the season to test the legs and ride his first competition kilometers.

“The agreeable climate, the route and the strong opponents have made me decide to start here. I don’t know the race, but when I see who rode here the past few years, I think we have made the ride choice. We left Thursday evening to travel from Brussels to Madrid and took a night flight there to Buenos Aires”, says Van Den Broeck.

“Friday afternoon there was a domestic flight to San Luis. We now have a few days to acclimatize”.

Only stage races before the Tour
As part of his preparation for the Tour Jürgen Van Den Broeck will only ride stage races.

“In my preparation for the Tour I will only ride stage races and this race has to give me an idea of how my condition is right now. I owe it to myself and my team to give the best I can in every stage race. I will try to give the maximum each time and hope to set some nice results. If I am able to set a good result in those races I will definitely go for it”, the Belgian says.

Lotto Belisol line-up
Jürgen Van Den Broeck
Jens Debusschere
Kenny De Haes
Bart De Clercq
Jürgen Van Den Broeck
Joost Van Leijen
Frederik Willems