Tom Pidcock is quietly confident and dreaming big ahead of the Tour de France Grand Départ in Florence.
The British star is coming into the race primarily targeting stage wins, but says he is dreaming of pulling on the leader's yellow jersey during the opening weekend.
Speaking at the Ineos Grenadiers team hotel on Wednesday, Pidcock said that he had accepted he would need to put his main general classification aims on hold for another year. However, he made clear that he would be targeting the overall lead in the opening stages.
"For sure it's possible," Pidcock said when asked if he backed himself to take the yellow jersey in Italy. "It's kind of what I've been dreaming of this last month when I've been training hard. There's a lot of guys who will already be having the same dream so it's not going to be easy, but we're going to give it a good shot."
"I want to race aggressively and try to win some stages," he added. "Initially I don't want to lose time in the GC for the sake of it, but if I need to do that in order to achieve those goals of winning stages then I will later in the race."
Pidcock faces a busy summer of competition in which he will also attempt to defend the Olympic cross-country mountain gold medal that he won at the at the Games in Tokyo. The Yorkshireman explained that his ambitions at the Paris Olympics meant that inevitably he needed to recalibrate his goals at the Tour this time out.
The 24-year-old won two Mountain Bike World Cup races last weekend before travelling to Florence.
"I think next year is the first year that anyone will see what I'm actually capable of on GC here," he said.
Ineos Grenadiers go into this year's edition with Carlos Rodríguez heading up the team, the recent winner of the Tour de Romandie, and their main protected GC rider. The team also has another card to play in the fight for the podium in the form of Egan Bernal, a former Tour winner.
"We want to come out of this race with success and however it comes is going to benefit us all," Pidcock said. "If we’re in the last week and fighting for the podium with one of these guys then we're going to go all in for that.
"I think if I was going for GC and so were Carlos and Egan, it's never easy for everybody because we’re all ambitious."
Pidcock's role will be "a bit more free" at the race, as he tries to go for stage wins.
"If we get a stage win, it will take the pressure off a little," he said. "We want to race aggressively. How the team raced in the Giro was nice to see. That's what we want to do here as well."
Much has been said before the race regarding the likelihood of Tadej Pogačar igniting the race from the off on Saturday on the tough mountainous stage. The Slovenian is targeting the Giro-Tour double, a feat not achieved since Marco Pantani won both races in 1998.
Pogačar attacked on stage one at the Giro in May on the hilly stage around Turin. But Ineos’s Jhonatan Narváez was able to follow the rampaging UAE Emirates rider and take the first pink jersey of the race.
Asked by Cycling Weekly if he could pull off a similar feat at the Tour, Pidcock said: "Maybe, we will see. Of course we know who will be good and who will make a difference already. I think UAE have been out on the course today.
"I think they’re going to want to make a difference already at the start of this race knowing that Jonas Vingegaard is a bit of an unknown. I think they will want to put their cards on the table early in case he comes good in the final week.”
