Joaquim Rodríguez will not miss the opportunity to do a Tour de France that is desgined for climbers and confirms that unless a surprise occurse, he will be at the start line in Utrecht and will also do the Vuelta a Espana. After his difficult 2014 season, the Katusha leader goes into next year "with the same enthusiasm as always."

In an interview with sports daily AS, Joaquim Rodriguez has confimed that the Tour de France is designed for a rider like him as it has only one time trial of 13.7km on the opening day and 8 summit finishes.

"I like it a lot but it is very dangerous. If nothing happens, I will be there. Surely, it is a Tour for climbers. If you had asked me, I could not have organized it better because it hard and has little time trialling I think they have done me a favour and I will ride it," he says. He made a late debut in the Tour in 2010 when he won a stage and finished seventh overall. He returned in 2013 when he finished on the podium in Paris.

The course has made him change his original plans.

"I had planned to do the Giro and the Vuelta but with this Tour, I will do the Tour and the Vuelta (where he was third in 2010 and 2012 and fourth in 2013 and 2014, ed.). The early season will be more or less like last year. After Liège-Bastogne-Liège I will rest and then start with the Dauphiné or Switzerland. I still have not decided which one. In February or March, I will go to Teide which is the only place you can train well at that time," he explains.

Regarding the 2014 season, he admits that it has been "the toughest" of his career with "bad luck" due to crashes in Amstel Gold Race (with two broken ribs) and the Giro d'Italia (with a broken rib and a broken finger). Nonetheless, he will face the new season "with the same enthusiasm as always".

"2014 was not a bad year when it comes to my work and I had a good feeling even though I missed power. I lacked it whenever I needed it. I will not change anything in my training and my work. I will not reinvent anything now," he says.

"Perhaps it was my hardest season. It would have been bad if I had not worked well. I think I have done everything right but I have had lots of back luck with crashes and I rushed everything as I wanted to try to race. Perhaps both the team and I wanted it too much and that has led to a lack of good results.

"I've done more kilometres than ever before. It was the first year I did three grand tours although I did not finish the Giro but I did the homework. Without a doubt, it has been the year when I have raced the most."

After his crash in the Giro, Rodriguez changed his plans to do the Tour.

"Doing the Tour was based on what I said before: the desire I had to race, seeing that things did not work out and I needed results and to find good feelings again. I recovered from the broken ribs and the finger and the feeling in the Tour was that I massed something and I was afraid that I could not find it in training.

"I needed to compete to do a good Vuelta a Espana. I made the commitment to do the Tour and it didn't turn out too badly (he was third in the KOM classification, ed.) and I felt better than I thought I would. Maybe that was what killed me because I tried to race sooner than I should have done.

"I have learned many things [from the Tour]. I raced in another way and my position in the peloton was different from what it had been for years. Everything was different. You learn to appreciate all you have enjoyed when you are feeling good. I also learned not to rush things and wait for my time. In the end, I wanted it and joined the fight but always missed something."

Rodriguez started his season well by winning the Volta a Catalunya.

"The truth is that I won the Volta at a time when I didn't expect it. My work had been very good but Alberto Contador had just won Tirreno-Adriatico and I thought that he would set the pace of the race. The win made me realize that I had worked better than I had thought but the crash in the Amstel with two broken ribs made me have to stop and that ended everything.

"I had to do everything very fast but the ribs can not heal if you are not resting. I had to keep training because I had to go to the Giro. I had pain and difficulty breathing but in two weeks I had to be at the start of the Giro so it was very, very hard."

At the end of the season, Rodriguez finished fourth in the Vuelta.

"I had hoped to do even better but the level of the Vuelta was very high. This year I had to face riders like Nairo Quintana, Froome, Valverde. I finished pretty well. It was one of the best times of the year for me."

Purito who turns 36 in May, goes into his sixth season with Katusha and his contract with the team will expire at the end of the season.

"It is true that I only have this year left but I am assured that both the team and I want to continue together. It is not that I will stay here for long, a couple of years at most, but I have always had a good relationship with Katusha," he says.