Dan Martin hasn’t had the best of starts to his 2015 season, even though he managed to race two days of the Challenge Mallorca (his earliest season start ever). He has suffered illness just before the Challenge Mallorca and isn’t well at the Cannondale-Garmin training camp on the island just now.

This puts his leadership of the team at Tirreno-Adriatico next month in doubt, meaning Ryder Hesjedal or Davide Formolo may have to step up and lead the team.

"The last few weeks it's been up and down, less than ideal," Martin said to Cyclingnews. "I'll see how training goes between now and then. I don't ever want to go to a race at less than 100 per cent, but maybe Tirreno will serve as a build-up to Catalunya like it did two years ago [when Martin won overall - ed.] It might work out like that again.”

Despite capturing a Monument in each of the last two seasons, Martin isn’t putting pressure on himself to win again, he says he is more of a performance based rider than a results based one, and that is similar to riding the Monuments anyway.

“It's the nature of one-day racing: I could have the best legs I've ever had but I could make the wrong decisions or just have plain bad luck, like in Liège last year. And maybe that's why I love one-day racing as well, there's so much more to it than just being the strongest. Hopefully I will be able to add another one-day race this year, but so long as I've prepared properly, then if bad luck hits me, so be it."

Martin also has the Tour de France to target this year, particularly with some uphill finishes in the first week suiting him perfectly.

"It's a very exciting route for me. We'll take it as it comes," he said. "If you asked me if I wanted to get eighth on GC or win a stage, I’d always choose winning a stage. That’s what maybe makes us different. I'm not going to go there focusing on GC but I'm not going to discount it either."