More teams for Paris-Nice

With the "race to the sun" kicking off on Sunday, March 6 in Issy-Les-Moulineaux, more teams have confirmed their lineups for the first ProTour event ever. Lampre-Caffita is starting with Gilberto Simoni as team captain, and the team indicated that he would be riding for overall classification.

"I enjoy this race, it's an important race for me as it also starts the long awaited Pro Tour," said Simoni. "It's important for me to know my actual form for racing in these conditions with one week long stage racing. If I am feeling good then I will try for a stage win or for some other results. I would not mind having the same condition and results as I had in 2003."

For Simoni it will be his second time in Paris-Nice. In 2003 he finished behind Vinokourov in the mountain stage up Mont Faron, and also finished 11th in the overall classification.

Lampre-Caffita: Alessandro Ballan, Salvatore Commesso, Gerrit Glomser, David Loosli, Evgeni Petrov, Gilberto Simoni, Daniele Righi, Patxi Vila

Fassa Bortolo: Paolo Bossoni, Fabian Cancellara, Mauro Facci, Juan Antonio Flecha Giannoni, Dario Frigo, Volodimir Gustov, Andrej Hauptman, Kim Kirchen.

Illes Balears: Daniel Becke, Jonathan González, David Navas, Aitor Osa, Vicente Reynés, Toni Tauler, Alejandro Valverde, Xabier Zandio.

Team Gerolsteiner: Andrea Moletta, Davide Rebellin, Ronny Scholz, Marco Serpellini, Marcel Strauss, Georg Totschnig, Beat Zberg, Thomas Ziegler.

Live coverage

Cyclingnews will be covering the 63rd Paris-Nice live, starting 14:30 local time (CET)/08:30 (USA East)/05:30 (USA West)/00:30 (Australia East) each day.