Omega Pharma Quick-Step Cycling Team rider Mark Cavendish was one of the top riders in the peloton who attended the Tirreno-Adriatico press conference on Tuesday, a day before the week long stage race begins. Cavendish had the following to say when interviewed by the media:
"As usual I'm focused on my own performance rather than thinking about the others," Cavendish said of his competitors. "However, I think a guy like Peter Sagan will be active when it comes to a race like this. I think stages that might come to a sprint, a guy like Peter might disrupt that and go for the GC. We'll have to see what happens. It will be a fierce first couple of days."
"My job as a sprinter is to win bike races," Cavendish said about his objectives and the objectives of OPQS. "Doesn't matter if it's at a Grand Tour, a very small race, or a big week long race like Tirreno-Adriatico. I'm here for Omega Pharma – Quick-Step to win. I want to win. We have a strong team here to win and we are going to try to do that. We've got a very diverse team. Our diversity gives us a lot of options which is really, really good and takes the pressure off me quite a bit."
Cavendish also discussed the 16.9km Stage 1 TTT on Tuesday.
"We'll see how it goes, It's a difficult time trial," Cavendish said. "It really takes a strategy to do this kind of a time trial, especially if it's windy like it was today. We have two great time trialists, Tony Martin and Michal Kwiatkowski, but also Niki Terpstra is very strong in this discipline. This team, OPQS, won the World TTT Championship last year. So we will try to do our best with a strong team, even tomorrow."
Tony Martin, UCI World TT Champion, did not attend the press conference but told the team he is very prepared and excited for the start of Tirreno-Adriatico.
"I'm happy about my form," Martin said. "After my overall win at Volta ao Algarve I trained one week in Mallorca, and than I was at home for another week. Everything went OK and I had a good approach to the race. As for Tirreno-Adriatico, it has a great parcour. I'm here to try to do something good even on the most difficult stages."