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Although race officials haven't made the announcement, reigning Tour de France titlist Carlos Sastre said he will lead his new Cervelo TestTeam in next month's Amgen Tour of California.
The Spanish veteran said in an interview with the Spanish wire service EEE and posted on VeloNews.com he will start his 2009 season at the Feb. 14-22 race beginning in Sacramento, California.
Sastre joined Cervelo after seven seasons with CSC and culminating last July with his Tour de France title. Cervelo, the Canadian manufacturer, was the CSC bicycle provider.
Cervelo was not among the teams named in December to compete in the fourth annual Tour of California. The previous selections were all ProTour teams.
Sastre, 33, will be the second Tour de France titlist in the field, since the event will also mark the North American comeback debut of seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong (Astana).
Floyd Landis, the dethroned 2006 Tour de France titlist and winner of the inaugural Tour of California, is also committed to compete for his new squad, Team OUCH.
Race officials have not yet officially announced the entry of OUCH, the former Health-Net sponsored squad, nor any other domestic teams. Several teams, including OUCH and the Santa Rosa, Calif.-based BMC, have announced their pending participation in the event via various cycling web sites.
In addition to Sastre, Armstrong and Landis, the 2009 Tour of California is expected to include:
Two-time defending race titlist Levi Leipheimer (Astana), David Millar (Great Britain), Christian Vande Velde (Lemont, Ill.), and David Zabriskie (Salt Lake City), who respectively finished second, third and sixth overall last year with Slipstream-Chipotle; George Hincapie (Columbia-highroad) of Greenville, S.C., the 12-time Tour de France finisher and winner of the final Tour of California stage last year; and former world time trial titlist Fabian Cancellara (Switzerland) and Gustav Larsson (Sweden), who respectively finished fourth and fifth overall last year for CSC.
Sastre, who will join soon his new team for a training camp in Portugal, said in the interview that he’s looking forward to racing in California, but hasn’t thought much about competing against Armstrong.
“The return of Armstrong? I respect his decision, but until I see him on the bike I don’t know how he will be,” Sastre said. “But it’s something that I don’t dedicate a lot of time to. I’m not losing any sleep over it.”
Editor's note: This post is an updated version. The previous version listed Cervelo as a ProTour team. It's not.
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