Orica-GreenEdge general manager Shayne Bannan, yesterday laid out the team’s ambitions for the 2013 Tour de France. Acknowledging that the route is probably more difficult than this year when the team made its debut, Bannan said the Australian outfit would particularly be targeting the first week.
“It certainly promises to be a fantastic bike race. It’s probably significantly harder than this year’s edition, but it definitely offers a lot of great opportunities for us. It will only be our second Tour de France, and we want to make an impact on what’s without a doubt the most important race in the world. It will be one our biggest goals of the year.”
The team will be heading to the Tour with Matt Goss as leader and although they didn’t win any stages this year, the return of the team time trial will be a welcomed one for Orica-GreenEdge, who won TTT’s this season at
Tirreno - Adriatico and the Eneco Tour.
“The set-up of the first week suits our ambition of trying to take our first yellow jersey,” Bannan said. “We obviously have our eyes on the stage four’s team time trial, and it means we will need to be up there from the beginning. Over the course of three weeks, there will be quite a few opportunities to hunt for stage wins and potentially one of the other jerseys for some days.”
Orica-GreenEdge has kept most of its roster the same from its debut year except for the virtual straight swap between Michael Matthews and Jack Bobridge, the latter replacing the former at the former Rabobank team setup. Matthews has been brought on board to add more firepower to the sprint train.
“Ultimately, we are not a GC [General Classification] team, but we will seek out every opportunity we have to be up there on most stages,” continued Bannan. “I definitely think we are growing into a team that’s ready to take on the Tour at a high level. This year has been a steep learning curve, but our results during the entire season and the experience that we have gathered this year give us a lot of optimism for our ambitions at next year’s Tour de France.”