A well balanced mixture of talent, self composure and determination is usually sufficient to slowly climb in the hierarchy of most among World Tour teams, it’s not a big secret, however, that when it comes to the formidable Team Sky, it just might be not enough.

Even the most recent history has proved that a certain amount of luck is necessary to be provided with an opportunity to lead a British squad in stage races of even secondary importance, and being successful in taking such surprising opportunity won’t guarantee a promotion within Team Sky’s ranks. Just ask last year’s Giro d’talia runner-up.

It was Geraint Thomas to be provided with an unexpected chance to retake the leadership role this time around, as the appointed captain for the Paris-Nice – defending champion Richie Porte, was transferred to star in the Tirreno-Adriatico after Chris Froome had withdrawn due to a back injury.

"It's nice to get this little opportunity now,” Thomas commented for BBC Sport.

"It's kind of come out of nowhere, really. I got a call saying I was going to lead the team here, so it was a bit all last-minute."

"I guess it will show me where I am at this moment in time.”

So far using this rare opportunity to the maximum, the Welshman acknowledges that the time arrives to make some important choices regarding his further development as a professional cyclist, and even though he seems to be perfectly suited to shine in the one-day races, apparently becoming grand tours’ GC contender would be a first choice for the Team Sky unexpected captain.

"I think next year I'll probably maybe start to go down that g-c [general classification] route really and look to try and improve there," he said.

"It's kind of coming to that point now in my career where I want to sort of specialise a bit now rather than be good at a lot of things.

"I want to try and be really good at the one thing.”

"And so I think this is the last sort of year where I'll target both with the same sort of focus."

The double Olympic track gold medalist admitted there is still a huge room for improvement in order to become competitive at the grand tour level. However, Thomas has already significantly developed his climbing skills as he was able to rip the peloton into pieces while leading the Team Sky’s death train on the ascents in Vuelta a Andalucia and, in fact, he appeared to be stronger than his leader – Riche Porte.

"I think I've definitely got a lot of head room, really, to improve because... I haven't done a lot of climbing efforts and stuff.”

The Welshman also acknowledges that good time trialing skills will be necessary to excel on more and more versatile grand tours’ routed, and he openly confessed that he has never paid attention to this kind of training yet.

"Obviously weight, as well, comes into play a lot when you're climbing. The same as time-trialling as well - I've never really trained too much on my time trial bike."