Prior to his fifth Tour de France, André Greipel (Lotto Soudal) is visibly relaxed. "The excitement is there, it is the biggest race on the calendar. But I am not nervous," the German told radport-news.com before the start.

Even though Greipel was unable to defend his German road race title in Bensheim, he has lots of confidence for the Tour. After his stage win at the Giro d'Italia which was a new addition to his schedule, he was also successful twice at the Tour de Luxembourg, and at the ZLM Toer in mid-June he added another two wins and the overall victory to his palmares. Nevertheless, the 32-year-old keeps his feet on the ground.

"The ZLM Toer is not the Tour de France," he said and underlined the fierce competition even in the absence of Marcel Kittel (Giant Alpecin) - whom he described as being o"n the right track" in the Netherlands. "In addition to us, there are four or five other teams that have a strong sprint train," said Greipel, referring to Peter Sagan, Mark Cavendish, Alexander Kristoff, John Degenkolb and Nacer Bouhanni.

Against these world-class sprinters, the Lotto Soudal captain wants to take at least one stage win - just as he has done every year. "This is the first goal, but of course you want to win as many stages as possible," said Greipel who has worked specifically on his explosiveness.

He refused to say which stages could be for him. "I never look much at the stages prior to the race because I can not change the profile anyway."

Should the Tour start well, the green jersey could be a target. "If there is a sprint, we will be there with the team. I'm even going to do the intermediate sprints in the beginning," Greipel announced.

However, he doesn't have much hope after Sagan's strong performance at the Tour de Suisse. "If you quickly lose 120 points to Sagan, it is difficult to close that gap," he said.