UTSUNOMIYA, Japan — Italy's Damiano Cunego won the Japan Cup cycling road race Sunday, holding off compatriots Giovanni Visconti and Ivan Basso.

Cunego, winner here in 2005, won the 94-mile race in 4 hours, 4 minutes and 57 seconds. Visconti and Basso were second and third.

Basso, a former Giro d'Italia winner, was making a return to professional cycling after a two-year doping ban. Italian authorities suspended him in 2006 after he confirmed that his frozen blood was found in Spain as part of the Operation Puerto investigation into doping.

Basso has always maintained that though he gave his blood to Eufemiano Fuentes — the Spanish doctor at the center of cycling's biggest doping investigation — he never used it.