One of the Australian contingent, Mathew Hayman is another rider who loves the cobbled classics - in particular, Ghent-Wevelgem, in which he finished fourth in 2009, and the 'Hell of the North', Paris-Roubaix.

He puts it a little more strongly than that: "Ghent-Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix are the two races I live for. In the past few years I've had a serious relationship with those races: some years it's been good, some years bad. We're working on it."

With Hayman, Juan Antonio Flecha and Edvald Boasson Hagen, as well as young British riders such as Ian Stannard, Team Sky looks as though it will go into the Classics with several options.

"They'll be my main goal," says Hayman, a strong domestique as well as someone who can excel over cobbles and contest bunch sprints. "With Flecha, who has lots of 'runs on the board', and Bo Hagen, who's young and massively talented, we should be good, and I don't think you can discount the younger guys on the team.

"I hope I can give those guys an insight into racing Belgium-style, and get in the trenches," adds Hayman. "The Tour de France is always going to be the race that most teams are judged on, but that's a shame in a way because these classics are also pinnacles of the sport."

Despite his use of a cricketing analogy to describe the experienced Flecha, Hayman says "I never watch cricket," and so he claims, proud Australian though he is, to have no qualms about joining a British team. "It's an international team!" he protests.

Hayman has arrived at Team Sky after a full decade with the Dutch Rabobank team. "I enjoyed some of the traditional aspects of Rabobank," he says. "But I was sold on the idea of Team Sky when it was put to me. When I first spoke to Scott Sunderland about it some of the things he was saying sounded too good to be true. But the first training camp showed me that it is real, and it's very exciting to be part of it from the start, and contribute to building something from Ground Zero."