Tejay van Garderen is finally ready to live up to his billing as a Grand Tour leader for BMC in the Tour de France, which begins on Saturday in Yorkshire.

"I envisioned this and dreamed about this as a kid," the BMC rider said. "It's exciting that it's actually coming true. It's like when a kid shoots hoops in his driveway and he thinks he's Michael Jordan, but it's so surreal when it actually comes true."

“Based on past results, I’ve earned the right to be the leader,” van Garderen said Thursday in a press conference. “This is a stepping stone for other Tours. I am learning how to be a good leader. I am hoping to make a good showing, and we can tweak a few things. One year I am hoping I can win the Tour de France.”

“I am honored that the team has shown the faith in me to lead the team,” van Garderen said. “It’s comforting to know the guys have my back.”

But hasn’t always been this relaxed in 2014, after showing promise in Oman, his form dipped and he only looked like himself once again in the Dauphine.

 "To be honest, it was a case of me needing to be a bit more humble," he said, later revealing that he was recovering from a fractured hip sustained in a crash at the Tour of Romandie. "My coach told me not to put emphasis on the Dauphiné and to just use it to build form but I was like, ‘whatever, I'll be fine.'

"I trained well after fracturing my hip and I didn't think that it was going to be a big issue at the Dauphiné. Crunching numbers in training is very different from being in a race scenario and I was missing that top-end rhythm. I needed to get my ass kicked there in order to get in shape for July."

However, despite evidently having trained and performed well, he has realistic ambitions for the Tour.

“I’m not expecting to ride out of my skin and drop Chris Froome on the first mountain. If you look at the progression from last year, I don’t expect any miracles. If I can stay consistent, calm and to just ride within myself and then I think I will ride really high into Paris.”

“I’m not going to name what place on GC would make me happy. I just want to prove to myself and to the team just that I can stack up in three weeks of racing and that I am a grad tour rider,” he explained. “I want to explore the possibilities, do my best and see where I end up.

“Even if we’re not going into the race as favourites this is also a stepping stone for other years. If I can have a good showing this year then we can tweak things, because one year I’m hoping that I can win the Tour de France.”

The most difficult part of this Tour for van Garderen will be the transformation from loyal super-domestique to out and out leader. This change brings more expectations and more pressure to perform. But van Garderen has shown plenty of maturity and thinks he can handle all the heat that comes with challenging for the Tour.

“The most difficult part of the evolution [as a grand-tour rider] is to learn to deal with the pressure, to be able to realize that ‘pressure’ is something that is just made up,” he said. “Once your name gets out there a bit, they start noticing when you have a bad race, and it becomes a bigger deal. I’ve learned how to balance that, because at the end of the day, you’ve just got to focus on yourself. The legs you have in the final 2km of the climb, that’s what really matters.”

He has used teammate Cadel Evans as a guide to how he should ride and how he should perform, and Evans very rarely performed poorly at Grand Tours, with crashes and malfunctions often hampering his chances and leaving him one win overall, albeit in the world’s biggest race, the 2011 Tour de France.

"Cadel was very structured with everything he does," he said. "He never left the top 10 positions in the peloton, which kept him out of trouble but also might have taken a bit more of his energy to be up there in the wind all the time. Obviously, Cadel is a big champion and I have had a lot to learn from him. I'm a bit more relaxed, which could be both good and bad."

One aspect van Garderen will need to master in 2014, as Evans did once before in 2010, is the cobbles of Northern France, which are even more difficult than the ones faced in 2010. Tejay knows he must ride fast enough to not lose time, but not to be so reckless amongst the specialists that he crashes and ruins his whole race.

"It's going to be a challenging stage but we've done our best to prepare in every way possible. We've looked at the tires, tire pressure the bikes and wheels, and we did the course recon."

"Having four burly guys around you (Greg Van Avermaet, Daniel Oss, Marcus Burghardt and Micheal Schär), who have all been top five or top 10 in Flanders or Roubaix is a pretty good safety net to have under you," he said. "I think those guys will do a good job of shepherding me through those tricky sections.”

But ultimately the race is going to be decided in the mountains and van Garderen has prepared thoroughly for the test.

"The Pyrenean stages will be hard. We skipped the Alps, which are definitely important but we already know those climbs from previous races that we've done and we only had so much time," he said.

"Hopefully I'm within striking distance coming out of the Pyrenean stages, so that I can really make my mark in the time trial," he said. "I saw the time trial stage earlier this year and I think it's one that suits me pretty well."

Van Garderen concluded nicely, by giving a round view of his expectations.

"I want to focus on recapturing the whole feeling of having low pressure, a good vibe, having fun and doing well, and not giving up if things go a little bit bad occasionally … because in three weeks you're bound to have one day that's not perfect."