Even though the future of Alex Dowsett hasn’t been clarified when the Tour of Britain came to an end, the British time trial specialist admitted that he had no other intention than staying in the Movistar outfit and long negotiations with the team were due to his will to secure his professional career with a three-year contract.

“The talks have been going on for a while,” he told CyclingWeekly “I knew I wanted to stay, I had my heart set on it."

“I think the package stood out the most – I’m happy within the team, and with the Canyon bikes and Endura clothing.

“It can be quite demoralising knowing that there are people out there with better equipment as you sit on the start ramp of a time trial – but luckily that’s not the case at the team.”

Dowsett reasonably acknowledged that signing a contract for three years was immensely important for him, having in mind planned reduction of professional teams’ rosters to be implemented by the UCI from 2016.

“Look at the year Ian Stannard’s had [a back, then hand injury, resulting in just 34 racing days] – every rider has a season like that at some point, so having a three-year deal offers a safety net of sorts,” added Dowsett.

“It also seems like every year it gets harder for those riders without teams to be on the market. And because of the planned changes from the UCI [a reduction in team size, possibly from 2016], I wanted a three-year deal as much as possible.”

Dowsett also commented on his performance in the Sunday’s team time trial, suggesting that exceptionally demanding Tour of Britain edition might not have been the best build-up towards the World Championships as it didn’t leave enough room for recovery between events.

“I’ve struggled to recover from the Tour of Britain – it was such a hard race this year,” he said. “Look at Quick Step; Michal Kwiatkowski was the first rider dropped on their ride, which says a lot about the difficulty of the race.

“I had to look after myself; if I did two, 500-watt turns, I’d then be fighting my bike for five to 10 minutes.

“It was a shame for me – Adriano Malori did a lot of work, and it’s not nice when you can’t help as much.”

He will represent Great Britain in Wednesday afternoon’s time trial – before then, he said, “I’ll basically have two days in bed.”