HTC-Columbia’s André Greipel begins his second half of the season with a return to the Tour of Poland, where in 2009 a stage win was one of his twenty victories last year.

“I had a bit of a break after the Tour of Austria and after ten days training the Tour of Poland is where I start the second part of the year,,” Greipel says. “It’s always a fast, difficult race, because with no individual time trial to sort out the general classification, you get breakaways going all the time and there are some tricky climbs to try and split things up. It’s not just a series of sprints.”

“However, we’ve got a great team going, a lot of support for me in the leadouts and everybody is fresh and read to go. My condition’s good, for sure our rivals will be looking at HTC-Columbia to do a lot of the work keeping the race under control, so we won’t have it easy and we’ll have to select our targets carefully.”

Greipel will be looking for his fifteenth win of 2010 in the Tour of Poland, but he says he is not deliberately aiming to try and beat his total of twenty victories of 2009.

“It’s not like that’s a particular objective of mine. In Poland I just want to win a stage at the very least and then we’ll take it from there.”

HTC-Columbia for Tour of Poland:- Michael Albasini (Swi), André Greipel (Ger), Craig Lewis (USA), Frantisek Rabon (Cze), Vicente Reynes (Spa), Marcel Sieberg (Ger), Martin Velits (Svk), Peter Velits (Svk).