With Philippe Gilbert (BMC Racing Team) focusing on Milan-San Remo and downplaying, perhaps even forgoing, the Ardennes Classics, the Tour de France might be the next logical focal point on the Belgian’s 2014 race itinerary, but Gilbert was non-committal about his possible participation in the most important cycling race in the world when Cyclingquotes met with him earlier this month.

Gilbert didn’t say as much, but a safe bet would be that Gilbert would be reluctant to take part in the French Grand Tour if that meant he would be required to ride in support of Tejay van Garderen.

“I can work for someone else when he is able to win. When he can do something, I can sacrifice myself, but not for nothing,” Gilbert said.

During this year’s Grande Boucle, Gilbert uttered slight irritation at the team’s failure to support him on the opening stages in Corsica as the team was riding in the service of Cadel Evans and Tejay van Garderen in the implementation of a two-pronged strategy that proved an exercise in futility as both Evans and van Garderen failed to live up to expectations.

“My participation at the Tour de France is still in the balance,” Gilbert acknowledged. “We still haven’t looked at the race program for 2014 too closely, but evidently it is something that I will do in accordance with the team.”

Despite his minor misgivings during this year’s Tour, Gilbert nevertheless put pen to paper on a two-year extension to his contract with BMC Racing Team shortly after the peloton had reached Paris.

The BMC Racing Team got off to a rather sluggish start to the 2013 season with results being well below expectations for one of the most expensively assembled teams on the WorldTour circuit. Instantly after the Tour this year, BMC parted ways with then team manager John Lelangue, and he has since been replaced by the experienced Valerio Piva, who arrived at the team after a successful two-year stint with Katusha. Whether or not the termination of the co-operation with Lelangue lay at the heart of the sudden revival of the BMC fortunes that occurred in the latter half of the season is uncertain, but Gilbert did point out that a new approach has been introduced on the squad.

“It’s a new mentality for the team. It’s still the same sponsor and the same name but we can feel it’s a different way to feel cycling and to work,” Gilbert said. “There’s a lot of change, a lot of new people coming and we can feel that they are all motivated to work and do this job. I think everyone will show he is a professional. When this comes from the staff and the direction, it goes automatically to the riders. I guess and I hope it will help us.”

Another option for Gilbert will be to participate in the Vuelta a España and use the Spanish Grand Tour as a warm-up race as he fine-tunes his form in an attempt to win back the rainbow jersey that he lost in Florence, Italy, last month. Gilbert has used this approach during the past two seasons, taking three Vuelta stage wins in the process, and winning the Worlds race in 2012.

“It’s still very early to say,” Gilbert commented, “but it’s definitely a possibility. Obviously I would like to win back the rainbow jersey, and besides, I have plenty of pleasant memories from the Vuelta. In fact, my stage win there this year was one of the sweetest moments in my career.”

Too many mountains?

Asked if he thought the organisers of the Vuelta were going too far in their emphasis on mountainous stages and summit finishes and thereby clearly favouring a certain type of riders and, coincidentally, tailor-making the route to suit the best Spanish riders of the day, Gilbert said that the problem extended beyond the Vuelta and that the riders are practically powerless to stem the tide.

“It’s a development that seems to proliferate throughout the world of cycling,” Gilbert said. “The Tour Down Under, for instance, used to be almost entirely flat but through the past years, more and more hilly terrain has been added to the parcours. Speaking of the summit finishes in the Vuelta, mountain top finishes don’t constitute a problem per se even though they clearly favour a certain type of riders to the detriment of all other types of riders. For a rider like me, three or four successive summit finishes may not be a problem if the summits are not too long, but if the organisers choose to drag the peloton through three or four consecutive mountain stages with four or five major climbs on each stage, then the favouritism becomes too heavy, I believe. However, it’s a development that is spilling into races all over the world. The organisers choose which kind of stages to include in their races, not the riders.”

Before rounding off the interview with Cyclingquotes.com Gilbert reflected on his possibility of reproducing his all-conquering form from 2011.

“Of course, such a string of successes is difficult to match,” he admitted. “Whether or not I will be able to repeat my performances and achievements from 2011 will depend on a series of things. First of all you need a good team to support you, and second you need a little bit of luck. It will also depend on my team obligations and the races I do,” Gilbert concluded.