Wednesday marks the start of the 2008 edition of the 5 stage Tour of Ireland. Columbia and Garmin-Chipotle are two of the nineteen teams who will be lining up for the off in Dublin. Ahead lies 900 km of racing leading to the final 4 laps of Patrick’s Hill in Cork on Sunday.

Tinkoff, Karpin Galicia, SouthAustralia.com/AIS, CSF Group Navigare, Team Type 1 and Rabobank are some of the other teams. Quadruple Tour de France winner Mark Cavendish is named in the Columbia team with Bernhard Eisel, Frantisek Rabon and Marco Pinnotti also making the start of the seven man outfit. National road champion Daniel Martin arrives back in Ireland to join the Garmin / Chipotle team with a star studded line up. The 21 year old is the nephew of Stephen Roche and cousin of Nicolas and will be joined on the start line by former Tour de France yellow jersey holder David Millar, Julian Dean, Martijn Maaskant and former Paris Roubaix winner Magnus Backstedt.

The race starts at Grand Canal Square at Hanover Quay, Dublin Docklands on the morning of Wednesday 27th. Stage 1 heads out of Dublin via Lambs Cross, Enniskerry and Djouce on the way to Roundwood and Mount Leinster before rolling into Waterford for the stage finish 192 kms later.

Stage 2 is a rolling stage of 158 kms from Thurles to Loughrea, but its just a warm up for the monster on Friday from Ballinrobe in Connemara to Galway with 3 large climbs over the 210 kms stage. The stage finish is in Salthill.

Stage 4 runs over 186 kmsfrom Limerick to Dingle over the formidable category 1 Connor pass before a finishing lap that takes them in a loop through Dingle, out over the Mam Clasach climb and back into Dingle again.

The final stage will truly test the riders with gruelling finish of 4 laps of the 17 km Patrick’s Hill loop which featured on stage 1 last year. In that race Stijn Vandenbergh of Unibet effectively won the race on the first stage by maintaining the time gap gained on the 25 % gradient of Patrick’s Hill on the subsequent days.

As with last year, the race will get better coverage abroad than at home with many millions of viewers tuning in from countries as diverse as Japan and South Africa to stations such as Versus USA, ITV, RTE, Sport + France, ESPN Star Sports Asia, Viasat Scandinavia, Mnet South Africa, SBS Australia, Gillete World Sports and EBU - UER Europe.

See www.tourofireland.ie/ for more info on the race route and times.