Chris Froome said he will be hoping for prominent time-trials in next year’s Tour de France route if he is to beat Vuelta a Espana winner Alberto Contador.
The 2013 Tour champion and his Spanish rival treated fans to a thrilling battle at the Vuelta, which ended just under two weeks ago.
Twice they went man against man up tough climbs to summit finishes as the rest of the field wilted, but both times, Contador sprung away from Froome in the last kilometre to put time into his rival.
Contador proved a little bit stronger in the mountains and Froome says he’s going to need races against the clock to beat the double Tour winner in next year’s Grand Boucle.
The announcement for that will be made in Paris on October 22 and the only question will be whether there is one or two time-trials and how long they will be.
And Froome insisted that despite a relatively unsuccessful year this season, he can return to his 2013 form in which he also won the Criterium du Dauphine, Tour de Romandie, Criterium Internationale and Tour of Oman.
“My goal is just to be as competitive as possible in Grand Tours,” Froome said Friday on a conference call ahead of Sunday’s World Championship road race.
“Obviously 2013 was a dream for me but I don’t see why that’s not something I can do again in the future.
“You’ve always got to come up against tough rivals — Contador is a tough guy to beat when he’s climbing the way he climbs.
“One aspect of the race which I feel are my strengths is in the time-trials.
“I’m quite eager to see the 2015 Tour route and whether in the time-trials I can get an advantage on him.”
Both Froome and Contador had originally targeted the Tour as the main focus of their season but neither even made it halfway through after breaking bones in crashes that forced them out.
In their absence, Vincenzo Nibali was in a class of his own but Froome denied the Italian was lucky to have his main rivals fall off their bikes.
– ‘Nibali won fair and square’ –
“Nibali has always been a Grand Tour contender, it’s not the first Grand Tour he’s won, he’s always been thereabouts.
“It will be great to have a race with him next year that you didn’t have this year.
“You can’t go back and say that guy would or wouldn’t have won.
“Nibali won fair and square. He stayed on his bike like a lot of people didn’t.”
Froome admitted he will come into Sunday’s 254km World Championship road race playing a support role for sprinter team-mate Ben Swift.
“One day races definitely haven’t been my forte but I’m happy to play a role in setting things up for Swifty,” said Froome.
“I’m definitely hoping to be there towards the final of the race.”
While Froome is a top class Grand Tour rider, finishing second at the 2012 Tour and both the 2011 and 2014 Vueltas, as well as a fourth in the 2012 Vuelta, he admits his record in one-day races is not impressive.
But he feels he could yet enjoy success in those, not least at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“I’m still to get a big result in a one-day race, it doesn’t seem to be my forte.
“But I’m hoping to get results in one-day races in the future, maybe at the Rio Olympics where it will be really hilly.
“One race I like is Liege-Bastogne-Liege, that’s a race I’d like to keep going back to.”
The World Championships will be Froome’s last race of the year before he takes some time off and gets back into training in November ahead of the new season.
The last couple of years he has started his season at February’s Tour of Oman, where he won in both 2013 and 2014, but he wouldn’t confirm what his plans for 2015 would be.