Much has been made of Giant-Alpecin’s proposed change from pure sprinting and dominating leadouts to mountains and stage races for 2016 after losing star sprinter Marcel Kittel. Simon Geschke, who aids the leadouts but also goes well on hard days and won a mountain stage at the Tour this year, has weighed in with his opinion.

“We saw that we can now ride for GC results in the Grand Tours. Warren was in the top 10 for a long time in the Tour de France and Tom had a chance to win the Vuelta a Espana this year. It is definitely going to get a bigger focus,” Geschke told Cyclingnews. “We will be less of a sprinter team that is for sure. Although, we still have quite a few guys who can win a sprint. Maybe we don’t have the best sprinter in the world but we will hopefully get some sprint victories with John [Degenkolb].”

Geschke has been on the team since 2009, back before the team was even close to being in the top level of the sport and winning two Monuments, like they did with Degenkolb in 2015, so there aren’t many better who can judge the growth of the team.

“I came to the team in 2009, and we didn’t have a bus, we were just racing with a camper,” he explained. “We really just raced to get in breakaways and showed ourselves in races like Paris-Nice. We never really had a chance to win races. It was a steady progression, it was a long process, and now we are one of the biggest teams in the world.”

After his success this season, the German is looking towards the Ardennes Classics for 2016. As with many riders in 2016 though, he will also try and make the Olympics.

“The spring Classics are certainly the first target and then the next big thing for me is the Olympics, I want to be part of the German team. That would be one of my big dreams left in cycling,” he said. “It’s a really hard parcours so the German team will not be the favourites. I’m good at going in the right breakaway and maybe I’ll be lucky to get into the right breakaway and may the situation will get easier for me because there are really long climbs and I’m not a pure climber.”