Team RadioShack's Portuguese rider Tiago Machado will start as the leader of the Team RadioShack squad in the 2011 Tour of Italy that begins on Saturday May 7th in Torino.

Both a good climber and good time trial rider, Machado has the perfect skills to be a good stage race rider, but may lack necessary experience being only 25 years old.

"We believe in Tiago Machado. Tiago is still young, he has a lot to learn but he proved already in his first year with our team that he has everything in him to perform well in hard stage races. Last year he finished seven out-of-ten times in the overall top ten of a stage race," Team RadioShack manager Johan Bruyneel told Roadcycling.com and our mobile sister site Roadcycling.mobi.

"This year he has never missed the top ten. If he can do the same in this Tour of Italy, we will be happy. Tiago can make a big step forward. He can be one of the protagonists of the 2011 Giro d'Italia. Since we don't know how he will perform in a race of three weeks we will not put any pressure on him. You can see this as an experiment, but sometimes we've been very lucky with similar experiments in the past," Bruyneel added.

With Robbie McEwen (with twelve Giro d'Italia stage wins on his score card), Robert Hunter and Manuel Cardoso, the team also has the potential to perform well in finish line sprints in the flat stages.

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Team RadioShack roster for 2011 Giro d'Italia:
Philip Deignan, Robbie Hunter, Tiago Machado, Robbie McEwen, Yaroslav Popovych, Manuel Cardoso, Ivan Rovny, Bjørn Selander, and Fumiyuki Beppu.