Portuguese Rui Costa has already claimed back-to-back victories at the Tour de Suisse and two stage victories at this year's Tour de France plus the not insignificant world road race championship meaning he will wear the rainbow jersey for the next 12 months.

Not one to rest on his laurels, though, Costa has already set his sights on new objectives for the 2014 season that will see the Portuguese ride for Italian outfit Lampre-Merida as he makes a switch from Movistar at the end of the year.

The 27-year-old from Povoa de Varzim, in the vicinity of Porto in northern Portugal, was one of the star riders present at the Palais des Congrès de Paris on Wednesday as the Amaury Sport Organisation, commonly known as the ASO, presented the 2014 Tour de France route.

“I think it will be a complicated Tour,” the reigning world champion told Cyclingquotes immediately after the presentation on Wednesday.

“Riding the Tour as team leader will be a new experience for me, and it will definitely be something else compared to one-day races of even one-week stage races. I have plenty of experience in those areas, but riding a three week Grand Tour as a team leader and dealing with all the pressure, the media attention and trying to cope with all the unforeseen twists and turns that occur during such an event will be new to me.”

In an interview with Gazzetta dello Sport earlier, Lampre-Merida manager Giuseppe Saronni explained that Rui Costa will act as the Italian squad’s undisputed team leader and will target the general classification at theTour de France next year.

Despite entering this year’s Tour with some personal aspirations and even though he was able to claim two stage victories at this year’s Grande Boucle, Rui Costa also sacrificed his GC ambitions when he dropped back to help his Movistar leader Alejandro Valverde when the Spaniard suffered mechanical problems on stage 13.

After winning consecutive overall victories at the weeklong Tour of Switzerland in the past two seasons, Costa is unwavering in his desire to put to the test his capabilities over the three weeks of a Grand Tour. So far Rui Costa’s 18th at the 2012 Tour de France, where he rode mainly in support of Valverde, constitutes his best overall performance at a Grand Tour.

“With us, he wants to try and do the Tour de France as a leader. Not for stages but to do a good general classification. He was a bit restricted at Movistar,” Saronni told Gazzetta dello Sport in the aforementioned interview.

“My aim is to finish inside the top ten,” Costa explained on Wednesday. “The Tour is always a very hard race with a lot of nervous riding, particularly during the first week, so it will be a difficult challenge. The opening stages in England are likely to be very windy and could easily cause some problems. Then on stage five there are cobblestoned sections made infamous during the spring Classics and luck may play a certain role on that particular stage. And then, of course, there are the mountains. As always they will provide the decisive battlegrounds for the overall Tour classification.”

The 2014 Tour de France kicks off in Leeds, England, on July 5 and ends in Paris on July 27.