Italian national coach has eventually named the nine-man roster to line-up at the World Championship road race on Sunday. Even though Vincenzo Nibali remains a squad leader, he claims that his form is away from the one he impressed with in July and that he badly suffers following his crash in the Tre Valli Varesine. Nonetheless, the Tour de France winner insists that all nine Italians will enter the event in a good form and that they’re planning to tear the race apart.

“My form is what it is,” Nibali said. “It’s useless to say that I’m still at the same level that I had when I was winning the Tour de France.”

“It hurts and I hope that before Sunday that I’m better,” Nibali said. “The truth is that I should be home to recover, but instead I’m here at the Worlds.”

Nibali was Italian best finisher last year in Florence, ending up just before the podium after losing the sprint for third to Alejandro Valverde (Movistar). He will lead his national team again, alongside Fabio Aru, while Giovanni Visconti (Movistar), Daniele Bennati (Tinkoff-Saxo), Damiano Caruso (Cannondale), Giampaolo Caruso (Katusha), Sonny Colbrelli (Bardiani), Alessandro De Marchi (Cannondale) and Manuel Quinziato (BMC Racing) will complete the nine-man roster.

Edoardo Zardini (Bardiani) and Davide Formolo (Cannondale) will watch roadside as reserves.

During the press conference held yesterday, Italian national team coach Davide Cassani outlined their strategy fof the 254.8 kilometre-long event, explaining that his squad will enter the competition with extremely aggressive mindset and will do their very best to make the race as hard as possible for fast finishers.

“The course is hard, but not that hard. It’s going to depend a lot on the race rhythm. We want to make it hard,” Nibali added.

“We have great riders and we are all near the same level. It’s going to be hard for the others to always mark all of our moves.”