"I hope to be there next week" - Mike Teunissen aims for a Tour de France nomination after strong season

Only a selected group of riders in the professional peloton can refer to themselves as Tour de France stage winners - and just a handful had the privilege of wearing yellow jersey at the Grande Boucle. Mike Teunissen is not winning race after race, but everything seems to have clicked at the Belgian Grand Départ in 2019 for the Dutchman who secured his career highlight in Brussels.

A couple years down the road, and the 32-year-old is now most likely returning for his sixth round in France as an experienced matador, ready to guide the success-hungry XDS Astana Team towards glory.

Who exactly will represent the Kazakh team over the three weeks? We don't know yet, but it's almost safe to assume Teunissen will be a part of that selection. "I hope to be there next week," he tells WielerFlits. "I will still be at altitude until Friday, so I think I have prepared myself well, if I am officially selected later."

His role however will be vastly different from last year, when he guided Biniam Girmay to three stage wins and a historic Green jersey. Astana simply don't have a fast man of such caliber and so it might be even up to Teunissen himself to hang around in bunch arrivals.

But we can only guess for now since the Dutchman is keeping the possible division of roles a secret for now. The fact is that he is currently preparing in Austria with compatriot Cees Bol, Aaron Gate and Florian Samuel Kajamini. The Italian with Dutch roots is there in preparation for the Tour of Qinghai Lake. "We also have to score UCI points there," laughs Teunissen.

For now, we assume that Bol, Simone Velasco, Alberto Bettiol or Clément Champoussin should accompany Teunissen at the Grand Départ in Lille. Harold Tejada was also due to ride the Tour, but it's not clear how his injury from Tour de Suisse affected his preparation.