Bradley Wiggins has indicated that his time as a grand tour contender is over but now performance manager Rod Ellingworth states that the 2012 Tour de France winner is capable of winning another Tour title. According to Ellingworth, it's simply a question of motivation for Wiggins.

Bradley Wiggins finalized his transition from track specialist to grand tour contender when he won the Tour de France in 2012 but after his ill-fated attempt in this year's Giro d'Italia, the Brit has indicated that he will never target the GC in a three-week race again. Instead, he is considering the idea of doing one final season on the road before turning his attention towards the track and the 2016 Rio Olympics.

“I think if I wanted to I could make the sacrifices but, to be honest, I don’t know if I have it in me to do that," Wiggins said earlier this year. "There are other things within cycling that I want to do.”

Since those statements, Wiggins has been very vague on his future objectives, simply stating that he is prepared to do what the team wants him to do. However, Sky performance director Rod Ellingworth who has played a crucial role in the recent success of the British team, makes it clear that another Tour win is with Wiggins' reach.

“He’s won it once so could win it again if he wanted to," Ellingworth told Evening Standard in an interview. "You never know with Brad but it’s about getting people in the right frame of mind. I don’t know, but his goal is at least to make the Tour team next year.”

At the moment, Wiggins is, however, unlikely to get the chance to lead Sky in the Tour de France. After the public debate over Wiggins' and Chris Froome's ability to co-exist on the Sky team, Wiggins acknowledged Froome's superiority as a grand tour rider and admitted that he would probably have to leave the team to get another shot at Tour de France victory. At the same time, Froome has stated his intention of targeting the Tour for many years.

According to Ellingworth, next year's race may not be a straightforward one for Froome who points to two potential rivals. Highlighting the Italian's win in this year's Tirreno-Adriatico, the Sky coach sees Vincenzo Nibali as a danger man while he also expects Nairo Quintana to continue his improvement.

“I think next year’s Tour will be very interesting,” he said. “Nibali beat Chris in a straight fight at Tirreno-Adriatico, and he’s clearly a super exciting rider. In addition, I think Quintana can get more out of himself.”

Ellingworth was the mastermind behind Mark Cavendish's win in the 2011 world championships and he had tried to repeat that feat in Florence earlier this year when Chris Froome was the designated captain. However, the Brits had a terrible race where not even a single rider managed to get to the finish.

Ellingworth frankly admits the failure while also stressing that a top 10 result was all Froome could have hoped for on that kind of course.

“We’ve not got it right just yet, have we? There’s a long way to go," he said. "But we’ll keep working towards it. I think we underperformed and, by that, I mean me as well. We didn’t have the right mindset and I made mistakes.”

The next two world championships are set to be held on hilly courses in Ponferrada and Richmond respectively and the same can be said of the highly anticipated road race at the 2016 Olympics. This week Ellingworth got the chance to gauge initial proposals for the course for the battle for the gold medal in Brazil and he expects it to be one for a climber.

“It’s difficult to say now as it could be a 2km hill or an 8km hill on the course, which can have a massive difference,” he said. “But I’d say it’s a good one for anyone finishing that year’s Tour in form, you’d say someone like Chris or else Pete Kennaugh. It’ll be exciting to see how Pete develops — he can clearly climb plus he has the right attitude.”

The British team failed to win the gold medal at the home Olympics in London last year when Alexandre Vinokourov took the gold medal.