Ben Swift bounced back from a winless 2013 season with a respectable spring campaign this year, proving that his impressive climbing skills make him a real threat when it comes to stages passing through slightly too undulating terrain to tempt pure sprinters. Thus, it comes as no surprise that the 26-year old Team Sky rider red-circled several lumpy stages of the 2014 edition of Giro d’Italia to celebrate his return to the three-week event with a victory.

Swift enjoyed a perfect spring campaign, certainly making up for last year’s disappointments, with stage victories at the Coppi e Bartali and Vuelta al Pais Vasco and, more importantly, podium finish at the Milano-Sanremo.

“I’m coming off some good form in País Vasco, the Ardennes didn’t go so well but to be honest they weren’t really going to suit me. I’ve had a couple of good weeks of training and hopefully I’m still on an upward trajectory here, and although I love the big bunch sprints, I’m really going to target the ‘lumpier’ stages.”

The 26-year old Briton aims to continue in the same line at the Italian grand tour, to which he returns for the first time since his debut back in 2009. Despite an obvious lack of experience in racing at the grand tour level, Swift needed only two stages to finish third in a bunch sprint behind the likes of Mark Cavendish and Alessandro Petacchi (Omega Pharma-Quick Step), and his appetite could only grown since then, especially taking his recent condition into consideration.

This year’s Giro d’Italia grande partenza brings back another memories to the mind of Team Sky rider, as Swift happened to race on the Irish roads as a child and unfavorable conditions which riders are expected to face during opening three stages cannot present any challenge to him.

“I did the junior Tour of Ireland, so not a lot of experience racing here but to be honest the roads look a lot like the ones back home,” the Rotherham-born rider told Cyclingnews.

“It’s hard, heavy going roads, quite draining, the weather seems to be pretty much the same. So I should hopefully be all right here.”

While targeting lumpy stages less suitable for pure sprinters, Swift admitted that Marcel Kittel (Giant-Shimano) is the only fast finisher plainly going beyond an otherwise square field of riders, what makes the final outcome strongly depended on a disposition of the German powerhouse and his reliable Giant-Shimano train.

"This year too, there are a lot of good sprinters here, but not so many of the absolute best ones, so that gives a lot of people the opportunity to take a win. And the racing’s that much harder as a result...although of course, it depends a lot on Marcel Kittel’s state of form. There could well be a lot of racing to finish second behind him!”