After completing the Tour of Oman, Philip Deignan will continue his early season Asian adventure at the Tour de Langkawi next month. The Team Sky rider hopes that the eight-day race will help him find his form, which he says is not yet where he wants it to be, ahead of the crucial European races later in the spring.
“I’m a little bit behind where I’d like to be ideally but it is still only February. We’ve got time to work on the condition,” he told Cyclingnews. “I’ve done (Langkawi) a couple of times before and it’s been a nice race. It’s a good race to get condition, and you can come out of it with quite good form because it’s eight days…. if you look after yourself well.”
It will be Sky’s first time at the race but Deignan has made two previous starts, with his last coming in 2009 when he finished 11th overall. Sky are yet to announce their full line-up but Deignan expects that the Colombian Sebastian Henao will lead the team’s ambitions in the general classification with Chris Sutton targeting the numerous sprint days.
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Deignan has already ridden the Mallorca Challenge but his European campaign won’t really begin until the five-day Coppi e Bartali, where Peter Kennaugh is the defending champion, at the end of March. Following that, he will enjoy a lengthy break after a busy start to the season before returning to Italy for the Giro del Trentino in April. The Tour de Romandie is Deignan’s last confirmed race on his programme, with the team still to decide whether to send him to the Giro d’Italia or the Tour of California.
“If I go to the Giro it will be to help Richie Porte or Leo Konig, so it will be more as a support rider and going in breakaways like I did last year. We didn’t really have a GC guy there last year but if we go this year with Leo and Richie it will be a different sort of scenario,” said Deignan, who rode an aggressive Giro that saw him come close to his first Grand Tour stage win in the second week.
“I learned a lot of things last year. It was a great season, so I definitely want to build on last year and keep progressing,” he added.
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