Leopold Konig capped a great season by moving to the WorldTour with Team Sky for 2015. He talked to Café Roubaix about his 2014 season and what he hopes his first year racing permanently amongst the world’s elite will be.

“If I look back, I can say it was successful based on my Tour de France performance, but if I’m talking of the overall I can say it was a bit unlucky. The first part of the year wasn’t going according to the plan, in March I was injured and it wasn’t easy to cope with this. Finally, it all went well, but the first part was disappointing, because I missed a lot of training and racing and that made me worried for my condition before the Tour de France. Fortunately, it all went well in July and that saved my season, but I feel I could have done a lot more if not for those injuries in the Spring, because I felt really good since the Tour of Oman and I was confident I can get some nice results in Tirreno-Adriatico and the Criterium International.”

Konig’s 2014 highlight was the Tour de France, where he ended an attacking three weeks with seventh place in his debut Tour, following on from his 2013 season at NetApp-Endura, where he won a stage and finished in the top ten at the Vuelta a Espana.

“At the start, I was expecting a very stressful and very hard race, and it was as I thought it would be. Compared to the Vuelta, which I did in 2013, the first days were completely different. There were no real mountains, but you had to keep your focus in every single moment, because the peloton was very nervous all the time. You have to be prepared and at 100% from a physical and mental point of view for a really tough race, with the cobbles, the wind, and the fight for a better place in the peloton.”

These two results, among others, had many of the big teams desperate to sign the Czech star, but in the end, he chose Team Sky. This meant he left other big squads like Katusha (who signed his 2014 teammate Tiago Machado instead) and his old team NetApp-Endura (who had hoped to keep him for 2015) disappointed.

“Team Sky is the right team for me, I followed them in the past two years and I like the way they work, the trainings they do and the philosophy of the team. It’s a perfect environment for me to develop and follow my personal goals. Of course, the final decision was not so easy, because I got three more good offers, from NetApp-Endura and two other teams, so I had to consider the most important factor, which was how can my new team help me grow. With Team Sky focusing on the Grand Tours, I knew this will be in my benefit and will help me develop.”

Konig will have access to many new races in 2015 that he couldn’t race in the past as NetApp-Endura was never invited to them. He would like to ride most of these in his debut season at the WorldTour, although he doesn’t knows his schedule yet.

“It depends also on the team’s goals and we all know that the Tour de France is very important for Sky. I would like to do the Tour again, but also some World Tour races I didn’t have the opportunity to do so far, like Tirreno-Adriatico, Volta a Catalunya and Vuelta al Pais Vasco. I find all these races quite interesting."