Aiming for a stage win and a top overall finish in the Tour de France later this month, the NTT Pro Cycling team will head to the Criterium du Dauphiné, a climber-heavy event. Seven riders, including Romain Kreuziger, Ben O'Connor, Louis Maintus, and Domenico Pozzovivo, will take on the French mountain race over five days.

"This is different from previous years, when we had one sprint stage, one time trial, and five mountain stages," Kreuziger said in a press release Tuesday.

"Now the race is only five days long, but it is very focused on hilly stages. There are no decent sprint days and most of the finishes are uphill.

"We're traveling through some beautiful places," he continued, "and there are some nasty climbs around the finish on the last couple of days that are going to be very interesting."

"We have a good team, but as we have seen in other races, there are two really strong teams and they are controlling the pace of the peloton so far.

Climbers Kreuziger, O'Connor, Meintjes, and Pozzovivo, along with Classics specialists Edvald Boasson Hagen, Michael Valgren, and Michael Gogl, will be in Clermont-Ferrand this week, completing NTT's seven-man lineup.

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"I am really looking forward to the Dauphiné. It's going to be five days of hard racing, five days of hard racing, and a lot of chances to get away with it."

"I'm really looking forward to the Dauphiné. Personally, I'm hoping that the good form I've had in training camp and the hard work I've been putting in over the last month or so will show.

"I hope to see some results in this last big preparation period for the Tour de France.

Sports director Gino van Oudenhove added: "We are in the final stages of preparation. We are in the final stages of preparation and that is what we will focus on." [We want to take it one day at a time and pick the stages that we can win. The main objective is to be fully prepared for the Tour de France."