Bradley Wiggins will head to the Tour of California as the pre-race favourite and he highlighted the importance put on the race by the owner of Sky and 21st Century Fox, two of Team Sky’s biggest sponsors.

"James Murdoch put this down as his second biggest race of the year that he wanted us to try and do well in after the Tour de France," Wiggins said of the deputy chief operating officer for News Corp.

"I think that shows you the level that they hold this race in and how important it is for a company like that," he said. "They put it before every other race. So I think that shows it's important and why we're here with a strong team."

This will be Wiggins second participation at the race and he does not have fond memories after he failed to finish in 2008.

"The last time I was here with [Mark Cavendish], and we had a horrendous time," he said. "We were both fat as anything, and we struggled. I spent one of my worst days on the bike, from some town somewhere [Seaside, ed.] to San Luis Obispo. It was 230km in the rain. Guys were retiring from the breakaway, it was that cold. I've never seen that in any other bike race.”

"So that was the last time we were here," he said. "And then I got sick and retired. Cav won the stage and then got disqualified. So it was a horrendous race for us. That was the last time we were here. So it can't get any worse than that."

Wiggins does believe he is showing signs of being a favourite, claiming he is at the weight he was at when he won the 2012 Tour de France. He showed at Paris-Roubaix that he had form and this continued with a strong performance in the mountainous Giro del Trentino. One of the main reasons Wiggins is a favourite is because of the 20km Individual Time Trial on Friday and he is also quite well suited to the stage 3 summit finish to Mount Diablo.

"At the end of the day, it's just about producing power at a given weight," he said. "It's not really that complicated. So I think we'll find out on Tuesday. Other things may come into play, like the heat, if that is a factor. But we'll find out. That's what's so good about cycling."

"I think a lot is going to happen in those first three days," he said. "And you're going to see the strongest guys come to the front straight away. And then it kind of sets the race up for the rest of the week. In some ways it may settle the race down a little but for a few days and maybe give Jens [Voigt] here a chance to get up the road. It certainly should be exciting for the people watching the first few days."

Wiggins was determined to keep quiet on who his potential GC rivals may be:

"I never really do look at the start list, because you always try and focus on what you're doing yourself," he said. "You never know where everyone is at in their preparation or whatever, and other things come into play. So you can be really focused on someone, and all of the sudden the race is over. But obviously everyone in this [press conference] is here for reason, and that's because they've got a chance. We'll see in the first days whose got it and who hasn't."