The UCI Road World Championships get under way in Italy this morning, starting with the team time-trial which sees professional cycling outfits go head-to-head for the second year running.
Scotland's David Millar is in the line up for Garmin-Sharp in Tuscany, while this year's Tour de France winner Chris Froome and Geraint Thomas are among Team Sky's six-man squad.
In the women's race, Britain's Joanna Rowsell and Dani King look likely to ride for Wiggle Honda, with Olympic silver medallist Lizzie Armitstead and Emma Trott named for Boels-Dolmans.
Sir Bradley Wiggins, fresh from the Tour of Britain, will contest the men's individual time-trial alongside compatriot Alex Dowsett on Wednesday, while Froome will also be challenging for the road race title a week today, backed by Wiggins, Mark Cavendish, Steve Cummings, Josh Edmondson, Ian Stannard, Jonathan Tiernan-Locke and Thomas.
In the women's road race on Saturday, Armitstead will be joined by junior world champion Lucy Garner, making her senior debut, alongside Katie Colclough and Nikki Harris.
The 2013 British National Track Championships also begin this week with a strong Scottish contingent heading down to Manchester. The five-day event will provide an opportunity for many to gain the qualification standard ahead of the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Confirmed on the start-list are Charline Joiner, Katie Archibald, Emma Baird, Louise Haston, Eileen Roe, Louise Borthwick and Jennifer Davis, while Callum Skinner, John Paul, Evan Oliphant, James McCallum and Silas Goldsworthy will also compete.
They will face a clutch of Olympic gold medallists including English riders Ed Clancy, Jason Kenny, Laura Trott, King and Rowsell.
The latter trio will be the ones to beat when Elinor Barker of Wales joins them in the women's team pursuit as the event is contested by teams of four riders over 4000m for the first time.
Susan Swarbrick
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article