Greg Henderson has his eye on the Tour Down Under title and a lot more, writes Michael Brown.
Greg Henderson might have been the world's third-best sprinter last year but he was never allowed the opportunity to prove it.
It's unlikely, he admits. But team orders and a stacked sprinting team at Columbia HTC headed by Andre Greipel and the illustrious Mark Cavendish, who won six stages at
last year's Tour de France, meant Henderson had few chances.
All that has changed. Now he is the No 1 sprinter for Team Sky, a new professional side established with the help of British Cycling and with the ambitious goal of creating the first British winner of the Tour de France inside five years.
It has a core of British riders, including Bradley Wiggins who finished fourth at last year's Tour when riding for Julian Dean's Garmin Transitions, but also has a considerable international flavour.
Henderson will never win the greatest race of them all. Sprinters don't win the Tour de France. But he has designs on winning stages at this year's Tour and his training and racing programme with Team Sky is geared towards that.
He has an opportunity to make a statement at this week's Tour Down Under around Adelaide, the world's biggest race outside Europe.
All of the top teams are there and many have sent some of their best riders, including Lance Armstrong, Oscar Pereiro, Cadel Evans, George Hincapie, Yaroslav Popovych, Gert Steegmans, Andre Greipel, Robbie McEwen, Jens Voigt and Alejandro Valverde.
Henderson will be joined on the start line by fellow Kiwis Hayden Roulston (Columbia HTC) and Dean (Garmin).
But few of the big names are in form so early in the season, and the Tour Down Under is traditionally a sprinter's event, meaning it could be an open race. Henderson has even been mentioned within the peleton as a possible tour winner.
The 33-year-old Dunedin rider was asked by his new team to skip last weekend's New Zealand road nationals to train - something he was disappointed to miss - and recently finished second in the Jayco series in Australia behind team-mate Chris Sutton.
It is also Team Sky's debut on the pro tour and they will want to make an early impression with the peleton.
"It's definitely a possibility," Henderson says of his chances of winning the Tour Down Under.
"There are a couple of testing days for the sprinters to see if they can go in the hills but history shows this is an event normally won by sprinters.
"It's about consistent results and, if that works out for me, I could be somewhere on the podium. It's our first outing as a team and things won't go perfectly but the guys have gelled really well so we are a chance."
That's all Henderson wants. He felt like he should have been racing in the Tour de France last year.
His form was good - he proved that with a stage win at the Tour of Spain - and his credentials even better with a proven record on the track that included a world championship gold in the 2004 scratch race.
"At Columbia, it was all about two bike riders and no one else existed," Henderson says. "It became a really negative environment in the team. We still won 85 bike races but, by the end of the season, there were a lot of disgruntled riders. It's still the case.
"I'm at an age where I want races and I want to win stages and races. I proved time and time again that I could foot it with the best riders in the world but at Columbia, we had the two fastest guys on the planet.
"I could have been the third fastest - and I'm not saying I was - but I didn't have the chance to show it.
"At Team Sky, I am the sprinter. It was a big move for me, and Columbia wanted to keep me, but I have the opportunity to ride for myself more and to move out of the shadows. I can't promise that I will beat these guys but I haven't got that many years left and it's my time to race.
"It's really exciting."
Recent changes to the Olympic cycling programme means Henderson's track career is effectively over. The IOC have canned his events - the points race and the madison - in favour of a bigger focus on sprint events.
As well as being a former world champion, he also won gold at the 2002 Commonwealth Games in the points race and has three bronze medals.
"I have pretty much hung up the track bike because there are no events for me," Henderson says. "It means that I'm now focused 100 per cent on the road. That's my big goal and I'm even targeting the road race at the London Olympics.
"Apparently it's going to be a flat course, a sprinter's course, to give Mark Cavendish the best chance of winning gold. I guess I will just have to go there and upset him."
Now that would be ironic.
