For Roman Kreuziger (Saxo-Tinkoff) this year’s Tour de France will be a rather different experience as he has gone from being a designated grand tour leader with Astana to performing a key support role for Alberto Contador with the Danish squad.

"The objective is perfectly clear," the Czech rider said on the team website. "We want win the Tour with Alberto. That's the goal for our team. We have three long and very hard weeks ahead of us. My own personal ambition is no other than the team's ambition. Every one of us in the team is motivated and focused to give our very best in the 100th Tour de France."

Though not being a top favourite for the race, Kreuziger won this year's Amstel Gold Race and more recently he came third overall at the Tour de Suisse. These achievements added to a victory list that already contains overall wins at the Tour of Romandie and Suisse, fifth overall at the Giro d'Italia and twice in the Tour de France's top 10.

For obvious reasons Kreuziger, much like his team captain, does not believe the 100th Tour de France is bound to be subjugated by a Team Sky juggernaut as in 2012. According to Kreuziger the list of favourites should be expanded to include more riders.

"Everyone's talking about Froome, Valverde and Rodriguez," said Kreuziger. "But if you look the start list there are many other very strong competitors such as Jakob Fuglsang (Astana), Cadel Evans (BMC Racing Team), Tejay van Garderen (BMC Racing Team) and Richie Porte(Sky)."