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As regional races, the Grand-prix OST-Fenster and the Grand-prix François Faber 2011 will see a majority of riders from Luxembourg or the border regions at the start. The rules allow us, however, to invite three foreign teams for the race. Unfortunately, there is a lot of opposition from races in other neighbour countries this week-end and most of the team are lining up in different events, so that they were not able to tell us the number and the names of riders they will send to Bech.
Of course, the big favourites of the race are coming from the Continental Team Differdange, the squad that dominates the inbound cycling world since a few years now. Some of the men from Gabriel Gatti are participating in two races in Estonia this week-end and the team in Bech will be led by the defending champion of the Grand-prix François Faber and the third of last year's Grand-prix OST-Fenster, Christian Poos. With the Tour de Luxemburg approaching, the former winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège U23 is in good shape and he has won in Brouch at the beginning of the month. A fifth place in a stage of the tough Tour de Rhône-Alpes-Isère, in France, is also standing on his most recent result list.
In order to have a chance against Poos and his team, the best Luxemburgish riders will have to stick together and play tactics. Some of them are in fact competing together in one squad, the National MTB team which, composed of Gusty Bausch, Daniel Bintz, Pascal Triebel and Luis Nelson, will face a last true test before heading to the Games of the small European countries in Liechtenstein.
On the Belgian side, the teams from Bianchi-Lotto-NHT Cyclingteam and Veranda Willems CC Chevigny will participate on Sunday, May 29, an the Grote-prijs Etienne De Wilde in Laarne, Belgium, but they have also indicated that they will send a team to Luxemburg, just like the VC Ardennes, who wanted to compete with his Continental team but is not allowed to do so by the UCI rules.
Dutch riders from RWC Ahoy have a race in their home country on the day before Grand-prix OST-Fenster, but they will do the trip to Luxemburg on Sunday with a team of seven riders, including Robert Berk who has won a race this year in the Netherlands, the GP Oostland.
The same thing counts for the Grand-prix François Faber for which the same teams wanted to send riders to Luxembourg, but have also on their program the Grote-prijs Etienne de Wilde, a race for U27 riders, as well as, for some of them, Paris-Roubaix for U23 riders which also takes place on the same day.
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