At 40 years of age, Danilo Hondo (Trek Factory Racing) is riding his 16th Grand Tour. In fact, he's only one day younger than the oldest rider in the race, Alessandro Petacchi. But the German isn't thinking about retirement yet.

As he told CyclingQuotes, Hondo has an important role in the Trek team: “I have a lot of experience that I want to pass on to my teammates. In-race the sports director in the team car cannot control everything. Especially with a young team such as ours, it's important to have an experienced road captain to coordinate the riders during the race.”

Hondo also has a plan for when he finally decides to call it a day: “From what I do now, it's a smooth transition to the team car and the role of the sports director. That's something I want to do in the future.”

But first, he has a Grand Tour to ride; a Giro in which he'll have various tasks: “The sprint train is a specialty of mine. But it's also my job to keep our general classification hopes, Kiserlovski and Arredondo, out of the wind, and of course I'm the road captain. I'll be the jack-of-all-trades.”