Dave Brailsford arrived in Adelaide late on Friday, 48 hours before Team Sky makes its competitive debut in the Cancer Council Helpline Classic. That race acts as a curtain-raiser to the first event of the 2010 ProTour, the Tour Down Under, which gets underway on Tuesday, and ordinarily wouldn't be a race of great significance.

But for Brailsford, and Team Sky, Sunday's city centre circuit race will represent, according to the team principal, "a huge moment."

Sunday is when the talking will stop, the training drills will be put into practice, and a lot of questions will begin to be answered. For Brailsford, though, one thing will not stop. "I'm a worrier," he admitted at the team's hotel in Adelaide on Friday evening. "I always worry, wondering what if we'd done this, or that.

"I'm sure that'll never change, but I'm confident that the team is ready and we've done everything we could. It's a big moment, and I'm excited."

As Brailsford said, the challenge of assembling a team of 26 riders presented a big logisitcal puzzle. Indeed, the final piece didn't fall into place until the team's official launch on 4 January, when the name of the 26th rider, Ben Swift, was added to the roster.

And so, as the seven riders prepare to give Team Sky its race debut, Brailsford is feeling confident and optimistic, while also keen to manage expectations.

"You can't go from having a group of individuals in mid-November to an elite team in six weeks," said Brailsford. "It's a process, which we're at the start of. But I'm happy with where we're at. I came here from the training camp in Valencia and the morale of all the guys is terrific. Everyone seems very excited, and it's the same out here with the guys in the team for the Tour Down Under.

Cameraderie

"One of the great things is the sense of cameraderie that already seems to be there. The guys were given laptops and iphones and they've been making videos and taking photos and exchanging them; it's great as a way of communicating and really bonding the team. The guys in Valencia sent a good luck film to the guys here, and [Juan Antonio] Flecha, who's not really into computers or the internet, was very excited to make his first film!"

Turning his thoughts to a debut season that is fast approaching, Brailsford added: "People keep asking, what would be a good race, or what would be a good season? The important thing is to try and not under perform. We're trying to create an environment in which the riders can perform to the very best of their ability. So if they under perform, we're doing something wrong.

"At the Olympics, with the track team [which won seven gold medals in the Beijing velodrome], we saw everyone perform to the very best of their ability. That's what we want to happen in Team Sky. And we're confident, with the riders we have on the team, that if everyone performs as well as they can do, the results will come and we'll have a good season."