After a fairly disastrous start to 2016 that has been filled with illness ever since January, Rohan Dennis has arrived at the Tour of California hoping to recapture some form as he seeks Olympic Gold in the Rio time trial.

"I've had a bit of sickness, but that's all passed," Dennis told Cyclingnews. "A few camps and heavy training hasn't brought it back, so I think it's all done thankfully – touch wood. It's all gone, and now I look forward, obviously, to the Tour of California and then everything is prepping towards Rio."

Dennis says that ever since he began recovering from illness, he has been getting better and better and his last races have went even better than expected.

"Training has been going well. Yorkshire went better than I expected. Obviously I wasn't at the level I needed to be to win, but it's a bit hard when I haven't really raced since January. So to still be up there in contention somewhat for the overall in Yorkshire, I was very happy with, and it showed that, OK, I'm not perfect at this time of year – stage races haven't been exactly finished or even started since January – but other than that, everything is looking good."

The California time trial occupies Dennis attention more than the GC battle does, after he was beaten into second in both by Bradley Wiggins in 2014.

"I'm hoping I'm not second again," he said of the time trial. "I want to come here and get confidence back. I have to win something. I have to perform well in one of the stages or overall, and one of the big objectives is to win that time trial. If it ends up being helpful toward the GC position, that's great, that's an added bonus. But you have to start somewhere and aim for some sort of result to kick start the season again and get the ball rolling."

Dennis says the plan is to build form to make BMC’s Tour de France team and use the race as preparation for his assault on taking Gold in Rio for Australia.

"My objective is to use the Tour de France to prep for Rio and hopefully get that spot as well," he said. "All going well, I'll be able to use that for Rio prep and work for van Garderen and Porte as GC contenders."

The Tour has two time trials and Dennis hopes he can be in shape to try and win them, although he knows his team may ask him to save energy on those stages if his GC leaders are high on the classification.