Mark Cassidy (right) up the road in the Tour of Oman last year
The An Post-Sean Kelly team is still at its training camp in Spain, but must prepare for the early portion of the season without the Tour of Oman and Tour of Qatar in its programme.
Stickybottle understands the team was not invited to either race, with the places for Continental teams at both events in the Middle East being taken this year by Asian squads.
One of the Asian teams that has been invited is David McCann’s RTS Racing Team; a rebranded version of his Giant Asia squad of recent seasons. The Irishman is a provisional starter for both races.
The lack of invites to Oman and Qatar this year for An Post-Sean Kelly means slightly fewer quality racing opportunities for the team in the first weeks of the 2012 season.
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Invites to both, like last year, would have seen one selection from the Irish-Belgian outfit take in the six-day Tour of Qatar from February 5th to 10th and then the six-day Tour of Oman from February 14th.
With Oman overlapping with the Etoile Besseges stage race in France, a second An Post-Sean Kelly selection would have ridden the French race, from February 1st to 5th.
Invites to Oman and Qatar would have meant that by mid February most of the team would have had a least one hard stage race in their legs, with the riders sent to the Middle East obviously getting two races in.
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The lack of Oman and Qatar invites notwithstanding, the team’s ever-increasing status in the international cycling community is reflected in the decision by the Volta Algarve organisers to invite the men in green to ride that race this year.
With An Post-Sean Kelly having had a breakthrough season last year, having seen its younger riders get stronger and beefed up its squad of late; it will be looking for testing assignments like Volta Algarve to continue that development.
It will start its 2012 campaign in France at the Grand Prix cycliste La Marseillaise, a 148km one-day race on January 29th won by FDJ’s Jeremy Roy last year.
It will then ride the Etoile Besseges, which begins just three days later and was won last year by Anthony Ravard (Ag2r)
After that, the team takes in the Volta ao Algarve in Portugal from February 15th to 19th.
With four road stages - three of them over 185kms long - and a 25km TT to negotiate, it promises to be a bruising early season encounter for Sean Kelly’s men.
An invitation to Oman and Qatar would have been a slightly gentler introduction to the new season.
Last year’s Volta Algarve was won by Tony Martin (then HTC-Highroad) after he took the final TT stage.
The other four stages were won by Philippe Gilbert (Omega Pharma-Lotto), John Degenkolb (HTC Highroad), Steve Cummings (Sky) and Andre Greipel (Omega Pharma Lotto).
