When show forced organizers forced to cancel GP Lugano last Sunday, Ivan Basso was forced to postpone his season debut. He will finally get started when he lines up in Paris-Nice on Sunday.

With a third Giro d'Italia victory his main objective of the season, Cannondale GC captain Ivan Basso has had a low-key start to the season. He has spent 14 days in February on the island of Tenerife to get in the necessary training kilometers and is now back in Europe and ready to start his racing season. The cancellation in Lugano came as an unpleasant surprise, but with the knowledge that his current form does not allow him to be competitive in the pointy end of races, it was not a big blow.

He is now looking forward to finally getting his season underway when he lines up in Paris-Nice on Sunday. He has always been known as a slow starter who needs plenty of racing kilometers before he starts to clock up results, and so he enters the race without any hopes of a high overall placing.

"My ambitions are the same I had at Lugano,” Basso explained. “I want to race, but I also know the limits of my condition due to the hard training at altitude. I need to find my racing legs first of all. I won’t look at the results, but more how I’m feeling. I’m working for the Giro and every race is a good chance to improve my conditioning.”

With Basso limiting his ambitions, the team will look to their young sprinter Elia Viviani to produce results. After a year where his ambitions were divided by the prospect of an Olympic medal on the track and his road commitments, he is now fully focused on the latter. He started his season in Qatar and Oman where the team was able to work on in sprint train, but the results were disappointing. He will try to make amends in France and find the flat stages in the first part of the race to his liking.

“I’m satisfied with my condition and the base established over the winter. During the first races, as expected, I wasn’t great, but now I know I can be competitive. A good performance at Paris-Nice is my first goal of the season. In the short and fast prologue, my abilities as a pistard can be counted upon. Then there are two chances for a sprint: I don’t want to miss them. In the other stages I’ll be at the disposal of the team. If I’m able, I’ll try to invent something, maybe in a break. I feel like doing something… and doing it well.”

With the team focus on Viviani and the sprints and with Basso without any overall ambitions, the team will have less clear objectives in the last, hilly part of the race. With Daniele Ratto, the team has a rider who is able to produce a fast finish at the end of a hard, selective race. For the rest, the team will try to be aggressive in order to create a surprise.

“We’re going to go to the race aiming to stand out and win a stage,” sport director Stefano Zanatta said. “Viviani did a good job in the last races and his condition improved. He has to be ready to jump at these opportunities, starting with the prologue. Basso needs to race without pressure and concentrate on bettering his form and to end the race by taking a step forward. I expect a gutsy team: with our great team spirit, everyone is able to surprise.”

Cannondale for Paris-Nice:

Ivan Basso, Elia Viviani, Mauro Da Dalto, Alessandro De Marchi, Lucas Sebastian Haedo, Ted King, Paolo Longo Borghini and Daniele Ratto