BMC’s manager Jim Ochowicz says that having two guys who can compete for GCs in Grand Tours is a great dilemma to have. After Richie Porte’s arrival to the team, Ochowicz is confident he and Tejay van Garderen can form a deadly duo in the mountains.

“We’re obviously waiting to see what the courses are like for the Giro, Tour and the Vuelta,” Ochowicz told Cyclingnews before the World Championships.

“We’ve heard rumours like everyone else about time trials at the Giro and a few at the Tour but we’re not sure about anything yet. We want to examine those courses first and then we need to have a sit with Richie and Tejay and decide on which direction we’re going to take with each of them based on what they did this year, a little bit, and who did what races.”

One likely change is that van Garderen may try to win Tirreno-Adriatico rather than Paris-Nice, as Porte is the defending champion in the latter.

“We know that Richie won Paris-Nice and Tejay froze out of it with two days to go before the finish. We don’t know if we want to change that up with maybe Tejay trying something new - I don’t know yet. We’ve talked about it internally and we’ve been kicking all sorts of ideas around but nothing has been firmed up yet."

Ochowicz says he is glad to have the dilemma of two great GC riders and says it isn’t a hindrance to the team. He points to how they have allowed Greg Van Avermaet and Philippe Gilbert to co-exist in the team to prove that Porte and van Garderen can do the same.

“We see it as an advantage more than anything else and we’re excited about the idea of having two great GC riders in our organisation. We’ve had it before and we’re determined to try and make it work again.”

“We have some type of hierarchy in terms of performance in terms of several different areas, such as the Classics, so not just the Grand Tours. So when you take guys like [Rohan] Dennis, [Greg] Van Avermaet and [Philippe] Gilbert into play you start to look at expanding that leadership role across different boundaries. It’s fun and it’s nice to be in a team where we have a lot of depth. If you look at our results this year we don’t win races with one rider and we’ve won with over ten different guys. We’ve covered all the bases.”