With a start in Belfast and a passage through his native Ireland, Daniel Martin (Garmin-Sharp) will have a great focus on the Giro d'Italia in 2014. Despite regretting it, the Irishman admits that he may miss the Tour de France as a consequence.

Daniel Martin had his best ever season in 2013. He got his season off to a fantastic start when he took the overall win in the Volta a Catalunya which is held on the roads near his Spanish home in Girona.

From there, the successes kept coming, with the major highlight being his win in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege after a dramatic finale where he reeled in Joaquim Rodriguez close to the finish. He went on to win a stage in the Tour de France and could have finished high on GC had he not been hampered by illness in the final week.

Despite crashing out of the Vuelta, Martin hit some good form for the end of the year when he finished 4th in Il Lombardia and 2nd in the Tour of Beijing. That set him well up for 2014 where his main targets will be a defence of Liege crown and a return to the Giro which will start with three days in Northern Ireland and his native Ireland.

In 2014 Martin had much success in the Tour de France but he admits that his focus on the Giro may force him to sit out the world's biggest race for the first time since 2011.

“I’m not sure at the moment to be honest,” he told Velonews. “It depends how I come out of the Giro, depends on how the Giro goes. If the Giro goes badly and I end up not finishing it for some reason, then the Tour becomes a very real possibility. If you race the Giro fully to the end and are competitive all the way to the end it will be very difficult to go and race the Tour, but it’s the biggest race of the year. It would be hard to miss it.”

In the Giro, Martin is set to be joint leader with Ryder Hesjedal who won the race in 2012 and will be keen to make amends for an illness-plagued title defence. While Hesjedal will undoubtedly focus on the GC, Martin's objectives are a bit different.

Despite his strength as a climber, Martin has never finished higher than 13th in a grand tour which he did in the 2011 Vuelta. He has had a philosophy of taking three-week races day by day without looking too much on the standings before seeing where he ends up at the end.

Instead of focusing too much on the GC, he will again try to take a stage win. He won a stage in the 2011 Vuelta and with his Tour win last year he could become the second Irishman in history to win a stage in all three grand tours after Shay Elliott who completed the hat trick in 1963.

To prepare for the Giro, he will follow a largely unchanged schedule that will see him start his season in Challenge Mallorca but he will skip the Tour Mediteraneen which opened his year 12 months ago.

“It’s essentially the same program I did last year, but instead of having a holiday after Liège, I’ll be riding the Giro," he said. "I was in top form at Catalunya and Liège last year and I’ll just try to keep the ball rolling. The Giro is something I’m just going to take in my stride I think.

"It’s hard to say how it’s going to go," he added. "I’ll be going into it as always, taking it as it comes. The real aim will be to win a stage. To have won a stage in all three grand tours already in my career would be an incredible achievement.”

Martin will next head to a Mallorca training camp.