Alberto Contador will ride his final race of the 2013 season on Sunday in Il Lombardia and the Spaniard looks forward to bringing a disappointing year to a close. The Spaniard plans to race less next year and sees Sunday's race as the first step towards a better 2014 season.

When Alberto Contador came back from suspension in August 2012, most expected him to find back to his former grand tour dominance and things started off on a good note when he won the Vuelta a Espana one month after his first race. However, things have been way more difficult in his first full season and the Saxo-Tinkoff leader has been unable to reach his former heights in 2013.

With the season now coming to an end, Contador can look back on a year that has so far given him only one win, a stage in January's Tour de San Luis. He failed to make the expected impact on his major season objective when he finished 4th in the Tour de France and his best result in a WorldTour race was 3rd in the Tirreno-Adriatico.

Contador has raced a couple of one-day races towards the end of the season and worked as a domestique in the world championships road race before going on to finish 5th in Milan-Turin on Wednesday. The final race on his 2013 schedule is Sunday's Il Lombardia.

With the season having been a disappointment, Contador is already looking forward to a better 2014 and sees Sunday's race as the first step in his quest to reach his former level.

“I consider Il Lombardia to be my first race of 2014,” he told Gazzetta dello Sport. “I want to shelve this 2013 season as soon as possible. It’s been a strange season. It began with some errors in my race programme and then it continued with too many commitments."

“I’ll give you an example," he added. "The week after Lombardy, I have a lot of commitments with sponsors – on Monday, I’ll be in Monza, Tuesday in Zurich, Wednesday in Madrid, Thursday in Paris and Friday in London. More like a ping pong ball than a cyclist.”

Earlier this year Contador claimed to be in the form of his life for the Tour and he repeated those statements in the interview with the Italian newspaper.

“In spite of that [his bad results], I trained very well for the Tour,” Contador said. “The tests told me that I was in great form and I was doing my best-ever times on climbs I use as a reference. But as soon as I arrived in Corsica, my sensations were different. Who knows what happened to me.”

Contador hopes to feature at the pointy end of Il Lombardia and expects it all to come down to the Villa Vergana climb whose top is located just 10km from the finish. He knows the race well from last year when he finished 9th and knows who to look out for in Sunday's race.

“The race will definitely be decided on Villa Vergano,” he said. “That’s a hill for pure climbers who are very explosive. I can see Purito [Joaquim Rodriguez], [Alejandro] Valverde or [Rigoberto] Uran doing well.”

You can follow the race on CyclingQuotes.com/live.