Vincenzo Nibali was without a doubt one of the most successful and most improved riders of 2013 season, while being painfully close to snatch the Giro-Vuelta double victory and marking his dominance in almost every mountainous stage-race he has participated in. However, the next season will bring him even more ambitious tasks, and the prospect of dealing with his new family responsibilities raises questions about motivation to train and compete for many weeks away from home. This situation has provoked Astana managers Alexandre Vinokurov and Giuseppe Martinelli, to take another attempt to call Cannondale’s Italian trainer Paolo Slongo in order to renew his cooperation with Nibali, which this time was successful.

What has been repeatedly emphasized, Nibali’s the main goal for the upcoming season is to compete for victory in the Tour de France, while Slongo has already had his contribution in the podium spot taken by the Italian in 99th edition of la Grande Boucle, yet in the Cannondale outfit. Coach admits himself, that he is excited about the possibility of renewed cooperation highly targeted to fight for the victory in the most regarded among Grand Tours.

“It’s exciting to work towards winning the Tour de France,”

“It’s a reason to change teams,” Slongo told Velonews

Before he joined Cannondale team in 2008, Slongo worked with the women and junior national teams. As Vinokurov and Martinelli have admitted, already during the previous season they have tried to gain esteemed trainer for Astana team, but it was a significant change in the situation in Cannondale that allowed the Italian to accept an offer and take up new challenges.

“This year many things changed,” Slongo explained. “It was a chance for me to find new challenges.”

“That’s my challenge, to help the group grow like I did in Cannondale, to take medium-high-range riders to the top,” he said. “I want to create a family and group atmosphere. There’s a lot of potential in Astana with the athletes, camps, etc. If you are good at your work, you can have a carte blanche.”

Slongo is known for very particular philosophy of working with riders, based on building a family atmosphere in as small groups as possible. As he admits, this significantly differs from the approach preferred in the majority of the World Tour teams, based primarily on optimizing the results achieved by riders through the consistent application of the scientific research results. Not denying the effectiveness of this approach, the Italian coach admits that the degree of “dehumanization” would not be appropriate for every rider, and certainly would not bring positive effects of working with Nibali.

“I don’t want Vincenzo to spend more time away from home! He has to for his work, the least I can do is to create an atmosphere where he wants to come to the camps,” Slongo explained. “The thing I noticed with [Sky] is that its camps are different, it’s all science and not that much human touch. Even down to deciding what they eat. That may work for Wiggins or even one of our riders like Ivan Basso, but Nibali would lose his mind.”