"The Tour is the goal that excites me the most this year" - Pello Bilbao reveals

After backing up a 3rd-placed overall finish at the Tour Down Under with a 4th-placed finish at the Volta a Comunitat Valenciana, Pello Bilbao is eyeing up a career-best performance at this year's Tour de France.

A career-best performance can be judged in many ways however. "Today I don't have the idea of fighting for the general. I have already tried to do so and I finished ninth," the Bahrain Victorious rider explains. "To aim for the general in the Tour de France is to spend a lot of energy and conditioning the team for a very complicated objective."

"For it to be interesting, you have to be in the fight for the podium until the end. Finishing fifth would not be enough to justify the work of a whole team. It is therefore more interesting to fight for the stages," Bilbao continues. "Logically, the Tour is the goal that excites me the most this year."

One of the reasons Bilbao does not fancy the battle for the yellow jersey is the immense quality of the usual suspects including Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard. "They're the cream of the crop," Bilbao explains as he reaches number 5 in the UCI World Rankings. It's an honor to be in the top 5 alongside these riders and it's strange to tell me that I'm among the top five riders in the world."