Team Sky’s Steve Cummings has said that he expects Bradley Wiggins to have an excellent Giro d’Italia, saying that the team leader is in excellent shape going into the race.
"I've been racing with him and he always looks super. He's in good condition and [has] good morale,” he said. "I think he's better than this time last year, so he's on target."
The thirty year old has a chance to take the first Maglia Rosa of his career when he lines out in tomorrow’s 8.4 kilometre prologue in Amsterdam. Wiggins is a multiple world and Olympic pursuit champion and while that distance is less than half what he will face in the prologue, his high-end cruising speed should set him up as one of the main contenders for the initial victory.
Wiggins has set two aims for the race; the primary one is to prepare for the Tour de France, where he is aiming to improve on his surprise fourth place of last year.
The second is to take the Maglia Rosa of race leader, topping the leaderboard for a while before backing off towards the end of the race. Wiggins has said that he doesn’t want to go too deep before the Tour, mindful perhaps of the collapse in form experienced by 2009 Giro winner Denis Menchov (Rabobank) and double stage victor Carlos Sastre (Cervélo Test Team).
However Cummings said that if Wiggins is in the race lead, or close to it, that he may well end up digging in and fighting for the final overall victory.
"If he's still leading after two weeks he'll have to go for it - I don't think opportunities like that come round very often," he said on the team website. No British rider has ever won the race nor, indeed, the Tour de France.
Cummings doesn’t subscribe to the view that the Giro can be treated as a training event. He recognises the history of the Italian tour, and also the special character that it has.
"The Giro's fantastic, an incredible race," he said. "The Tour's fantastic, but it's not the be-all and end-all, like some people think it is. The Giro is one of the most colourful races and in my opinion the best race to watch on TV."
Wiggins will be backed by Cummings, fellow Briton Chris Froome, Michael Barry, Dario Cioni, Mathew Hayman, Morris Possoni and the sprinters Chris Sutton and Greg Henderson.