22 teams will be seeing action in the upcoming 2010 Paris-Nice, which will begin on March 7 in Montfort l’Amaury and end one week later on March 14 in Nice.

Alberto Contador will have a chance to redeem himself as Team Astana is one of the invited teams scheduled to compete. Contador, a two-time Tour de France champion, has been harboring bitter memories of his last year’s Paris-Nice performance, when he reportedly ‘bonked’ during a critical stage and lost the overall lead which he had grabbed in earlier stages. Luis Leon Sanchez ended up as the winner.

Sylvain Chavanel is expected to race for Team Quick Step. He won stage 3 last year and finished 2nd overall, so he poses a powerful challenge to anyone looking for the title this year.

Teams Milram and Footon-Servetto will not be joining the event, however, since both teams failed the automatic…

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Five riders from Team BMC have spent two weeks on Spain’s island of Mallorca, as the weather there is much better during this time of year than it is in Switzerland. Riders Martin Kohler, Mathias Frank, Thomas Frei, Florian Stalder and Alex Moos got together and took advantage of the warmer climate in Mallorca. “This is the second year in a row that we have come here to train in December.We make a happy group; we can put in some serious hours every day,” says Kohler. “We’ve had a few rainy days, but it is generally about 13°C, which is great considering we would be facing -3°C at home!” The riders have different schedules, beginning at different times throughout the day. “Some of us start a little earlier so we’ll slip in a few intervals, while some guys like Mathias and Florian have a…

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Team BMC has announced their roster for the 2010 season, and they seem to be very confident about it. They have also announced that they have signed U-23 national team coach Noel Dejonckeereas their European operations manager and assistant sport director. “We want to be in all the big races. The past two seasons we have grown into a strong team, and combining that with the big recruitment effort we have made this year, we expect to be competitive in every race we enter, from the one-day classics, to the one-week stage races to the grand tours,” says sport director Johan Lelangue. The 2010 team BMC roster consists of the following riders: Alessandro Ballan, Chris Barton, Chad Beyer, Brent Bookwalter, Marcus Burghardt, Cadel Evans, Mathias Frank, Thomas Frei, George Hincapie, Martin Kohler, Alexander Kristoff, Karsten Kroon, Jeff Louder, Steve Morabito, Alex Moos, John Murphy, Scott Nydam,…

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