Team HTC-Columbia's stage race hope Tony Martin will begin his season this year in the Mallorca Challenge on February 7th, but according to the German he doesn't expect to dig deep since he's still recovering from injury.
"I probably overdid it with the winter training and injured my tendon in the knee. I had to stop for two weeks and I am just now back to riding 100 kilometers daily. I will start the Mallorca Challenge holding back a bit," Martin told German news agency dpa.
In the off-season HTC-Columbia saw Thomas Lovkvist (Team Sky), Kim Kirchen (Team Katusha) and Michael Barry (Team Sky) along with many key support riders head to other teams. The changes meant the 24-year-old would step up to a leadership role in the stage races, but also saw the team's ability to defend a leader's jersey diminish.
With the best two sprinters in the world, Mark Cavendish and recent Tour Down Under winner André Greipel, the team's number one focus will be on delivering wins in the bunch finishes. However, HTC-Columbia had the most victories in the professional peloton last year, and managed to spread them around throughout the majority of the team. The American team leadership is clearly able to get the best from its riders, so it's doubtful that they would let a talent like Martin go to waste.
With Greipel focusing on Paris-Nice and Martin having reduced expectations due to injury, we likely won't see any indication of how the general classification battles will be fought by the team in France.