A bad crash and subsequent shoulder pain meant that Ben Swift had a terrible 2013 season but the Brit has now recovered from his recent surgery and is motivated for a new start. As stage 2 of the Tour de France ends in his home town of Sheffield, he hopes to earn a spot on the Sky roster for the world's biggest race and will have a different schedule compared to past seasons.

After  year focussing on the track, Ben Swift had hoped to return to his best road form in 2013 but the season ended as a near disaster for the fast Brit. After showing great form in the first three races of the series, he crashed in the fourth and final race of the Mallorca Challenge and missed most of the spring season due to knee pain.

When he returned to competition in May's Tour of Norway, he had hoped to put his season back on track but his bad luck continued. In his crash, he had hurt the shoulder on which he had surgery at the end of the 2012, and he rode with severe pain in the races he did. After abandoning the Eneco Tour, he decided to put an end to his travails, stopped his season, and had new more surgery on his shoulder.

Having now recovered, Swift is raring to go and he is extremely motivated for the 2014 season. Next year the Tour de France will start in Yorkshire and the lumpy second stage will finish in his home town of Sheffield.

As a sprinter, it is not easy to earn a spot on the Sky roster that will line up with the target of defending Chris Froome's overall win - just recall how isolated Mark Cavendish was when he rode for the team in the 2012 edition of the French grand tour. Nonetheless, Swift has defied expectations in the past when he made it onto the roster in 2011 and he hopes to make a similar surprise in 2014.

“It’s so hard to make the Tour de France team at Sky with being the kind of rider that I am but with stage 2 finishing in my home town I have to do everything I can to make that team,” he told Cyclingnews. “Targeting the programme I want and trying to win as much as possible, that’s going to put me in the best possible position.”

Swift first made a name for himself as a sprinter who was able to overcome harder climbs than most other fast finishers. He first became noticed in the Vuelta al Pais Vasco which is known as a race for climbers where only the strongest sprinters can target stage wins.

In recent years, Swift has tried to develop into a great classics rider but has had little success. In 2014 he will go back to the kind of racing that allowed him to first earn a place in the spotlight.

“I’m thinking about stepping away from the Classics team just because I don’t think they’re races that have suited me," he said I’d like to do a few more of the lumpy stage races, like Catalunya and Pais Vasco, where I think I can get better results.

“Doing the Classics programme took me away from those races," he added. "I’ve been okay in the Classics but it’s never been my strong point. I’ve always been better at the lumpier stage races and it just feels a bit more logical to push for that. We still have to confirm the race programme but that’s ideally where I’d like to be heading."

With stage wins in the Tour Down Under, the Tour de Romandie and the Tour de Pologne, Swift has proved that he knows how to win at the WorldTour level. In 2014 he hopes to find back to that kind of form an forget about his disastrous 2013 season.