In a year of near-misses, Taylor Phinney was part of the BMC team that came agonizingly close to win the first ever world team time trial championships one year ago. This year the American is back as a part of a strong 6-rider group that has meticulously prepared an assault on a title that he and his team would dearly love to win.

Taylor Phinney took the final step into the world elite last year when a storming win in the Giro d'Italia prologue and several days in the race leader's maglia rosa put him into the spotlight on the biggest of scenes. However, the year was also a frustrating one with numerous near-misses in some of the biggest one-day races.

In the London Olympics, Phinney narrowly missed out on a medal in both the road race an team time trial when he finished 4th in both events. He suffered a similarly merciless fate in the world championships when he finished agonizingly close to the win in both the individual and team time trials, being beaten by just 6 and 3 seconds respectively.

Extremely motivated to make amends for those losses, Phinney has arrived at the world championships well-prepared. While he will race the road race mainly as a domestique, he has big personal ambitions for the two timed events.

Things kick off tomorrow with the team time trial. Phinney will lead a strong roster consisting of Daniel Oss, Tejay van Garderen, Michael Schär, Manuel Quinziato and Stephen Cummings. It's testament to the importance of the event that the team has finalized its preparation on a long training camp and Phinney is convinced that the added cohesiveness will make a difference tomorrow.

"With the group like we have, it' quite easy to get it together and to gel as a unit, " Phinney tells CyclingQuotes.com at the end of his final recon ride. "We had an initial selection of 8 that we then had to bring down to 6 and we've spent time with each other to get to know each other. I've always had an experience in team time trials and I try to share my wisdom on TTTs with the other guys and just make sure we are all in the same place. We are such a solid unit. It's really cool to see 6 riders come together and really work as one. It's going to be a special day tomorrow."

While the course for the road race is the hardest for more than a decade, the routes for the time trials are of a different, flat nature. However, Phinney is convinced that it's not all about power and that unity will come into play.

"It's definitely a power course and you still have to have the cohesiveness in the group and the horsepower to get into Florence but if you are not a team that knows each other very well, you can definitely get lost in that last bit. It's pretty technical," he said. "Also at the start there's a little climb so you really need to have a solid plan and know everybody's strengths and weaknesses. That's what we've been doing. We've spent 2-3 weeks together, all 6 of us including the two reserves that didn't make it. I don't know what kind of preparation the other teams have done coming in here but it will be hard to do more than what we have done so far."

Being one of the best time trialists in the world and part of a team that specializes in team time trials, Phinney is extremely serious about tomorrow's race.

"Ever since I was a junior, U23, I've always loved team time trials, even in stage races," he said. "o have the ability to have it as a world championship event is really important for us as a team. It is really important to me and an event that I really love. We came close to winning last year and were just 3 seconds away so we've definitely stepped it up a notch this year and really put a big checkmark over this whole preparation We've got to tick that box tomorrow and are all motivated to do so."

The team time trial kicks off tomorrow at 14.00 with BMC being one of the final teams down the ramp. You can follow the race in its entirety on CyclingQuotes.com/live-