Ben Swift says Team Sky’s squad is raring to go ahead of their debut race at the Tour Down Under.
Swift, recovering from a three-hour training ride on Friday morning has told us that riding in near 50deg heat “It was so hot it was hard to breathe,” said Swift. “You felt it burning your throat, and we were all going about with croaky voices. But the last couple of days haven’t been so hot and I’m feeling really good now and looking forward to the race.”
Swift and his six Team Sky team-mates will make their competitive debut on Sunday, 48 hours before the Tour Down Under gets underway, with a circuit race in Adelaide city centre acting as curtain-raiser to the first ProTour event of the 2010 season.
“We’ve got a strategy, but I think in the race itself we’ll play it by ear,” continued Swift. “We’ve all got a role, but in training you’ve got no one challenging you, so it’s different to a race and it’s a case of whether we can pull it off in the race. You never know what’s going to happen on the road, and as the race goes on we’ll tweak things a little bit.
As Swift noted, most of the world’s top sprinters are in Adelaide . “Only Cav [Mark Cavendish], [Thor] Hushovd and [Tom] Boonen are missing,” he said. “It’ll be tough, but we’ve got a few days to have a go at cracking it. If we keep trying and trying and finally crack it on the last day that’ll be a result for us.
“We’d love to have a stage win and we’ll do our best for that, but if we can work well as a team it’ll bode well for the year, I think.
“Greg Henderson, CJ [Chris Sutton] and Mathew Hayman are all going well and are really motivated for this race, but the rest of us [Russell Downing, Chris Froome and Davide Vigan] are going well too.