Caisse d’Epargne will be sending two team captains to the start of Paris-Nice this Sunday, a measure of how seriously the team takes the race. In addition to defending champion Luis Leon Sanchez, the team line-up will also include controversial World number one rider Alejandro Valverde.
"It is the most important race of the first part of the season," Caisse d’Epargne’s general manager Eusebio Unzue told AFP. He is not expecting an easy time in the Race to the Sun though, as he added: "the absence of highly selective stages makes this race even more difficult to control."
Caisse d’Epargne’s main challenger will likely come from the Astana team of Tour de France champion Alberto Contador. The 2007 Paris-Nice winner cracked in the closing kilometres of stage 7 last year, having forgotten to eat, which allowed Sanchez to escape to victory. The mistake was seized upon by Contador’s rival and teammate Lance Armstrong in his imfamous “a lot to learn” Twitter entry.
With Olympic champion Samuel Sanchez due to lead the Euskaltel-Euskadi team, Paris-Nice organiser ASO is preparing itself for “Spain versus the rest of the World”.
The eight day Paris-Nice race begins on Sunday March 7th with a an 8km prologue in Montfort-l’Amaury.
Caisse d’Epargne team for Paris-Nice:
Juan José Cobo (Spa)
José Vicente Garcia Acosta (Spa)
Ivan Gutierrez (Spa)
David Lopez (Spa)
Luis Pasamontes (Spa)
Mathieu Perget (Fra)
Luis Leon Sanchez (Spa)
Alejandro Valverde (Spa)