Cancellara prepares for Milan-San Remo face-off and identifies Sagan as main adversary.

So far, Fabian Cancellara may not have been at the peak of his powers this spring but he still believes he is once again all set to be smack dab in the middle of the action at Milan-San Remo and is prepared to do whatever it takes to stop Peter Sagan stealing the show and the honours.

"Right now I'm not bad. I've done my job, I've done my homework, I've done what I need to do," Cancellara said according to Gazzetta dello Sport as the Milan-San Remo draws ever closer.

Thus far, Cancellara has been unable to land a win this season to reassure himself and his team of his form and send a warning signal to his opponents. Instead, like everyone else, he has been forced to sit by and watch Peter Sagan dominate, almost at will, a number of the races he has ridden.

Cancellara, winner at Milan-San Remo with a solo attack inside the final two kilometres in 2008, is perfectly aware that he might find Sagan on his wheel going over the top of the Poggio this year and would have slim chances of victory against the super-fast Slovakian.

Tour bitterness still lingers

"I respect him as a rider, he's a young talent and it's good we've got some good talent riders. But as I said after the Tour de France, he's still got a few things to learn," Cancellara stated with a cautiously formulated critical remark, referring to an episode in last year’s Tour de France where Sagan sat on the wheel of Cancellara towards the end of a stage only to jump clear and perform one of his crowd-pleasing if controversial victory salutes, which didn’t go down well with Cancellara.

"I'll ride my race and he and the Cannondale team will ride their race. I have my ideas how I'm going to race Milan-San Remo but I'm going to keep them to myself. It all depends on how the race goes. He wasn't such a gentleman with me, so I'd probably break it down, I wouldn't pull if we got away. It all comes down to who is in the group but I don't think I'll take riders to the finish like I did last year."

On the other hand, Cancellara dismisses the chances of pure sprinters such as Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma-Quick Step), Alessandro Petacchi (Lampre-Merida) and Andre Greipel (Lotto Belisol) but warns of numerous dangerous expert rivals.

“It's not only about Sagan, there are riders from Paris-Nice, people like Chavanel(OPQS) and Gilbert (BMC), Pozzato (Lampre-Merida) was riding well at Tirreno-Adriatico, as was Hushovd (BMC).”