Notes

• The following riders are set to represent Euskaltel at the upcoming Critérium International, starting this Saturday: Pello Bilbao, Jonathan Castroviejo, Egoi Martínez, JJ Oroz, Samuel Sánchez, Amets Txurruka, Iván Velasco and Gorka Verdugo. Romain Sicard was orginially down for a ride, but his enforced abandonment of Paris-Nice and subsequent participation in the Volta a Catalunya put paid to his Critérium aspirations.
• Just hours after the line-up for Crit. Int. was revealed, news came through that 21-year-old Pello Bilbao had crashed in training and would not take to the start after all. The prodigious climber has broken the olecranon bone in his elbow, and will thus have to wait even longer for his debut in the orange kit. Euskaltel have communicated that they will not replace Bilbao with another rider.
• Egoi Martínez, Gorka Verdugo, Amets Txurruka, Iván Velasco, Gorka Izagirre, Jonathan Castroviejo, Pablo Urtasun, Iñaki Isasi and JJ Oroz accompanied Samuel Sánchez on his recent recce of the first stage of this year's Vuelta al País Vasco. "It's a País Vasco-stage with the same difficulties as always: a demanding parcous, no pauses, nervousness... It will be a very important day, the first of the race, the forces will be intact, and the end will be exciting", he told the team's website. "There will be gaps, but not big enough to win the race". Galdeano echoed his team captain's sentiments, saying: "It's a typical País Vasco stage. It's a stage with a lot of curves, and you're constantly going either up or down. It'll be a complicated day. Inside the last 40k there's no let-up and it'll be nervous. It'll be hard, and if it starts raining... There will be gaps, but the Vuelta will not be won before the last-day time trial."