Reigning Tour de France green jersey Jasper Philipsen returns to the race this weekend once again forming one half of the sprint dream team with Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Mathieu van der Poel, but the pair aren't expecting to find immediate success as the event kicks off in Tuscany.
Last year, Philipsen won at the earliest opportunity on the flat third stage in Bayonne, which came after two hilly stages in the Basque Country. This time, it's set to be a similar story with two hard opening days to Rimini and Bologna coming ahead of flatter stage 3 in Turin.
Three years ago, Van der Poel claimed the yellow jersey with a stage 2 win on the Mûr-de-Bretagne, but with 3,800 metres of climbing spread over seven major hills on the road to Rimini, he certainly wasn't talking up his chances of repeating that success on Saturday.
"It depends on the racing and what other teams want to do," the Dutchman said in a pre-race press conference set in Palazzo Vecchio in central Florence.
"I haven't done the recon of the stage, but it looks quite hard on paper. There will be a yellow jersey on the line as well so for sure it won't be an easy stage.
"I think the first two stages are quite hard. Last year there was a question mark over whether it was possible. It was too hard. This year – it always depends on the racing – but it looks like it'll be a bit too hard again.
"I've raced in this region before, and I know how hard it is. We'll see but it's not that I've made a big goal out of it."
Philipsen, meanwhile, said that the team can "start without any stress" with the opening weekend not suited to himself or Van der Poel, before the focus turns to sprint wins and another tilt at the green jersey.
This time around, there are plenty of chances for the Belgian and his sprint rivals to compete for wins, even if there's no prestigious sprint finale on the Champs-Elysées waiting at the end of a gruelling three weeks.
"Every year is heavy. The Tour is never easy. The stages are tough, but I think opportunities will arise," Philipsen said. "I think the maximum opportunities for us as a team is maybe nine, that's with the gravel stage included. But you also see some of those stages end with a breakaway. If we can do six sprints out of nine that would be nice.
"With not going to Paris this year it's a different mental game for the sprinters. We have to suffer until the end if you want to win green. There are no final rewards waiting for us in Paris unfortunately, but it's still a nice Tour with nice opportunities."
The battle for the green jersey could be more intense than it was last year, too, with Philipsen saying that Mads Pedersen – a distant second last summer – could once again be his closest competitor for the sprinters' biggest prize.
"Probably I think Mads will be one of my big competitors," he said. "Maybe he hasn't shown that he's the best in pure sprints, but he has shown that he's a strong bike rider who is capable of getting points in all of the stages.
"Definitely if he's putting his mind to it from stage 1, I think that's different from last year. If he goes 100% then he's a big rival."
While Philipsen spies maybe half a dozen chances for himself spread across the 21 stages, Van der Poel is more limited in what he can achieve during the race. Of course, he'll once again be working for his teammate on the pure sprint stages, though the opportunities for Classics riders, even the best in the peloton like himself, are more limited.
"The thing is there's only a few chances for riders like me," Van der Poel said. "For the sprint stages, it's obvious that we go for Jasper and then the stages that suit me we go really hard as well, like in every Grand Tour.
"The easier stages are almost 3,000 metres of altitude so it's not that easy anymore. The parcours makes it really hard to show a good shape."
Nevertheless, he plans to ride all the way to Nice, even with another major goal at the Paris Olympic Games following shortly after the conclusion of the Tour.
"I think it was quite relaxed to have a long preparation coming into the Tour," Van der Poel said. "Now it's going to be long for us as well with the Olympics after the Tour, so it was quite important to have those solid days.
"The plan is to go for the whole Tour and, if possible, try to win a stage myself. Then I'll be there in the sprint stages for Jasper. It's a bit similar to last year but when my chances were there, I was a little bit sick. So, I hope to take my chances if they are possible."
