Vincenzo Nibali is focused on ending his season with a strong performance at Il Lombardia and possibly even a third victory but he is also looking much further down the road, to the final phase of his career, as he decides if he will stay beyond 2019 with Bahrain-Merida or look for a new challenge elsewhere, perhaps even with Team Sky. Nibali will start Il Lombardia wearing the number 1 as the 2017 winner. He also won the event known as, Race of the Falling Leaves, in 2015 and has won either a Grand Tour or a Monument Classic for the last six seasons. Nibali won Milan-San Remo in March and so considers his 2018 season a success despite the pain and suffering he endured after being knocked off his bike by a spectator on stage 12 of the Tour de France on Alpe d`Huez. He underwent vertebroplasty surgery to ease the pain and returned in time for the Vuelta a España, in the hope of finding the form for the World Championships in Innsbruck but cracked before the decisive climb.ADVERTISEMENT Nibali`s form is better now than in Innsbruck two weeks ago but he does not know if it will be good enough to allow him to win Il Lombardia for a third time. `My form is an incognito,` Nibali said with pragmatism. `I can only do what I can, my legs are what they are. It`ll be about grit and determination. I haven`t trained specifically for il Lombardia, I`m using the form I got from Vuelta, the Worlds and Giro dell´Emilia, where I was eighth. Considering his options beyond Bahrain-Merida and 2019
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