Tomorrow Peter Sagan begins his quest to win the Tour de France’s Green Jersey for the points competition for the third straight year. Sagan has won the jersey by not just being fast but through consistency, making sure he is always in the top 5 in sprint finishes, picking up any intermediate sprint points whenever possible and, crucially, picking up points on the tough hilly days when the rest of his pure sprinter rivals have been dropped and are unable to score.

With all this taken into account, Sagan is understandably the favourite to win the race. Yet he does not sound his usual confident self when discussing his chances of victory in the classification.

“I don’t know. We can see the favourites, me for sure because I have won two times in the last two years, but it is the Tour de France and nobody knows what will happen. In the stages, we will see day-by-day how it is going and then we will see who is the favourite for the green jersey,” he said.

But his confidence returns when he moves on to talk about something that is becoming a regular occurrence at the Tour: his customized Cannondale SuperSix Evo bike paint job.

Cannondale have kitted the whole team out in customized bikes this year, and Sagan, made famous with his bikes for his 2012 “Tourminator” scheme that glows in the dark and had a paintjob like the Incredible Hulk, has gone for the Wolverine, with a much simpler reason for choosing the scheme.

“It’s Wolverine because he regenerates quickly and it’s a nice movie.”

Sagan will face challenges from pure sprinters like Andrey Greipel, Mark Cavendish and Marcel Kittel as well as facing a challenge from the fast men who can climb like John Degenkolb, Alexander Kristoff and Arnaud Demare.