The Season is back and in Full Flight

 Although racing gets underway in Australia on January 1st and is followed by regualr racing, Paris-Nice is still marks the season opener for road racing. It is the second World Tour stage race on the UCI programe but the first in Europe. Several other stage races have been held and last weekend saw the first of the semi-classics, one of which was snowed out, but the race to the sun brings out a level of excitment that the Tour Down Under, Tour of Qatar and Tour of Oman just doesn't yet generate.
This weekend there are also some big one-day races including a new Italian race which is partially a reincarnation of Giro Del Lazio which last ran in 2008. With Several races being wiped off the calendar and other stage races being shortened to one day, this is reassuring that RCS has faith in Italian cycling, also considering the turmoil that Italy is currently in, and makes it a bumper weekend in that country with Strade Bianchi being held the day before.

Paris -Nice was won last year by Bradley Wiggins during his year of GC dominance but he won't be back to defend his title as this year he is aiming for a maiden Giro d'Italia win. In his place Team Sky have Richie Porte and new recruit Jonathan Tiernan-Locke leading the team for overall victory. With several big GC names racing the Sky duo will be up against the BMC gun Tejay van Garderen, Jakob Fugslang in his first big race for new team Astana, Cannondale's Ivan Basso, a GC stacked Blanco win with Robert Gesink keen to notch his first win of 2013, Thomas De Ghent is aiming for the Tour this year so will test himselfs against his big rivals, Dani Navarro will want to continue his winning ways at his new team Cofidis, FDJ and IAM Cycling will want to impress while other riders will want to test their legs and see how their preperation stack up in the peloton.

Peter Sagan, Fabian Cancellara, Cadel Evans, Alejandro Valverde, Lars Boom, Nick Nuyens, Juan Antonio Flecha will be just some of many riders gearing up for the Ardennes and cobbled classics and with a high quality spread across the Italian weekend there should be planty of stories that will arise. The tactics and strength of the riders will be analysed as cycling is once again eveywhere with races left, right and centre. The season is fully underway and certain narratives that were latent or slowly grew out of the off-season will grow in relevance and meaning with the Monuments and Grand Tours always having endless sories surrounding the riders who participate in those races. As it is said of any grand tour, you can't win one in the first week but you certainly can lose one. So the riders will know that their season isn't at stake so early on but some big performances may just be enough to get that grand tour spot or a place in classics, whatever their final objective, the spectator is once again about to be spoiled to thrills, crashes, panache, escapes, mud, grime, broken bikes and bones and the glory of standing atop the podium.

The racing schedule for the first week of March

1-3rd: Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen (2.1)


2nd: Strade Bianchi (1.1)
        Ster van Zwolle (1.2)

3rd: Roma Maxima (1.1)
       Grand Prix de la Ville de Lillers (1.2)

3rd-10th: Paris-Nice (WT)

6th: Trofej Umag (1.2)

6th-12th: Tirreno–Adriatico (WT)