Stam, Schep and Slippens lead Giant assault on World Championships

Dutch Six Day stars Peter Schep, Danny Stam and Robert Slippens are just three of the Giant stars heading for the World Championships next week.

With racing due to be held over four days in the brand-new, state-of-the-art velodrome in Palma, Spain, Dutchmen Stam and Slippens will be looking to end what has been a very complicated season on a high note.

"Robert’s bad crash meant he couldn’t come back to racing until January, so that’s made it harder for us.” Stam commented recently. “But we are still hopeful that we can all round off our racing year in the best way possible."

Peter Schep will be partnering Stam in the Madison as well as taking part in the points and scratch events. Greg Henderson of the T-Mobile squad will be tackling the same latter two events for New Zealand. Robert Slippens will be racing the Omnium and last but not least, veteran Rene Wolff of Germany will be riding the boards in pursuit of success in the keirin, sprint and three-man events and another World gold.

"I did some good training in South Africa with Danny, but I wasn’t able to get into the stage race I wanted to do tehre, so I came back to Holland earlier and raced here instead in some minor road events.” Slippens told Giant’s website.

"For me the omnium is a voyage in the dark, because it’s a new race altogether, very different from what I’ve done before, there’s a lot of different skills involved to keep you on your toes."

"I can’t predict which way it will go, though, plus being a new velodrome in Palma we don’t know what it’s like, but I hope the omnium will provide a good end to what’s been a very difficult season.”

Slippens and the rest of the Dutch team head out to Palma this Saturday [March 24th] to “get in as much training as possible on the new track and get familiarized with everything there. Then we'll be looking for some great results from  the following Thursday onwards..."