True to character, Mark Cavendish (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) has one thing and one thing only on his mind prior to the start of Tirreno-Adriatico: to win.

When pressed during the press conference yesterday, though, the former world champion grudgingly named Cannondale’s Peter Sagan as a rider who might unsettle his ambitions for stage victories on the tricky finales that mark the week-long Tirreno-Adriatico.

“As usual, I’m focused on my own performance rather than thinking about the others,” Cavendish said during Tuesday’s pre-race press conference. “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.”

Reigning world time trial champion, Tony Martin, will spearhead Omega Pharma in Wednesday’s opening team time trial and if the squad can stay close on time, or even win, Cavendish could lay his hands on the leader’s red jersey on intermediate and finish-line time bonuses in stage 2. Dutch road champion, Niki Terpstra, will also be on the line, providing the Belgian squad with awesome firepower in the TTT, sprints, and hilly intermediate stages, giving his team more than one option in their quest for the overall lead.

“We’ll see how it goes. It’s a difficult time trial,” said Cavendish. “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 won the world TTT championship last year. So, we will try to do our best with a strong team, even tomorrow.”

The Tirreno-Adriatico will see an eagerly awaited head-to-head confrontation between Cavendish and former teammate and archenemy André Greipel (Lotto-Belisol), but Cavendish avoided commenting directly on Greipel, saying that his ride across Tuscany would be focused on one thing: winning.

“My job as a sprinter is to win bike races,” said Cavendish. “It 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.”