By Sunday night, Alberto Contador will learn whether his decision to avoid looking over the Tour de France to Sheffield is a smart move or not but, speaking the day before the race began, he said with eight categorized climbs later on it can prove to be very complicated.
Call it confidence, call it old-school approach road is decided, but Contador did not take advantage of his time in Yorkshire to check Jenkin Street or Oughtibridge. "I have seen the video but not on the ground. One of the big factors that can be a breeze and there are a heck of a lot of climbing to the early stages in the Tour. You will need to pay attention to during the day and I hope my legs up to the task. "
The Spaniard has won more Grands Tours from any other riders in the peloton - including the Tour in 2007 and 2009, coupled with a victory in 2010 that was removed from his record as a positive test for clenbuterol - but he is keen to clog coat to favorites shoulder Chris Froome, the winner in 2013. "rider who has shown he is the best in both years was Froome, he's No1 favorite. For me, I had better last year? Yeah, but I do not know if it will be enough. "
Contador appeared more relaxed than Froome have to face the media on Thursday and said he expected a different race from 2013, when the Kenyan-born British gained considerable amount of time in opponents fairly early in the proceedings. "We've got some major stage early - stage two and stage five more Pave - but the race does not start until we got to the Vosges, and there is no early test of time, so it will not be like last year."
This season, Contador looked stronger in the first round of Froome but not quite at the same level as the head of the Sky team when they were paired together in the primary stage of the Dauphine Libere race, a warm-up for the Tour. He was not sure what form this season compared to 2009, when he won the Tour despite tense battle with his own teammate, future winner Lance Armstrong's former seven-time.
In 2010, Contador showed good compared to the other favorites in the third stage, which featured several rocky sections. The consensus is that he's a much better position than Froome to walk this year on the cobbles, level five, but not surprisingly he was keen to play this down.
"Froome has a highly experienced team to that stage but so Vincenzo Nibali and he is quite useful in that kind of terrain. It will be a battle for survival for us all. It is a point where you could lose the Tour, but it also one where you can get a lot of time on your rivals. "
Team Saxo-Tinkoff Contador has continued with Sky, as it includes two key members who have spent time in Froome Team Sky - road captain, Michael Rogers, and directeur sportif, Steven de Jongh, who has also coached Contador - and general manager of the team , Bjarne Riis, said if he was in the shoes of Sir Dave Brailsford, he might have acted differently vexed question of whether to put in Sir Bradley Wiggins or not.
"Wiggins is not on my team, so it's not a question I had to worry about. But if he was on my team, I would have included him."
That was entertaining footnotes but what is certain is that Sky has been involved in the formation of the Tour Contador, he will have a closer look at Sunday....
