Giro return for Farrar

It was hard to watch Farrar’s devastated face during the processional fourth stage of the Italian Grand Tour that honoured his Belgian friend and training partner, Wouter Weylandt, who died in a high-speed crash the previous day.

The Garmin-Barracuda sprinter was initially hesitant when his team asked him to start the 2012 May spectacle but he plans to race for about two weeks chasing stage wins whilst preparing for the Tour de France.

“I kind of had it in my head to maybe take a year or two off the Giro,” Farrar told Cycling Central.

“The more I thought about it, I said, the longer I wait to go back the harder it’s going to be. I might as well grit my teeth and do it and don’t let it turn into a big thing or any bigger thing than it already is.

“There will still be some long thoughts on the road during the Giro I think.”

Farrar enters the Tour of Oman tomorrow on the back of the Tour of Qatar, which he finished second overall with his American-based squad winning the stage two team time-trial.

The 27-year-old differed his training during the off-season in Seattle, USA and hopes it will pay dividends in the lead-up to and during his first objective of the year - the Spring Classics.

“I did a tonne of training up in the mountains - cross-country skiing and hiking,” he said.

“I still rode a lot but if I wake up and it’s pouring rain and four degrees in Seattle why don’t I just drive up to the mountains, spend a big day skiing in the snow and not suffer through a five hour ride in the rain?”

Ghent-Wevelgem stands to be Farrar’s biggest personal objective of the spring after his third-place finish there last season and the fact it starts where he is based abroad.

Farrar says his classics campaign won’t clash with that of Australian teammate Heinrich Haussler who is desperate to win Milan - San Remo after finishing runner-up in 2009.

“Heinrich’s much stronger than I am, he can excel in some classics that, realistically, I don’t have that good of a shot at winning,” Farrar said. “I have a few that are a bit more sprinter focused and I think they suit me pretty well.

“We’ll break it up throughout the spring and sometimes we’ll be on separate programs. If you take the opening weekend in Belgium, he’ll ride Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and I’ll ride Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne that way we have a fresh guy going for the win in each of them. Other times, like, San Remo is a huge objective for him so I’ll do everything I can to try and support him there.”

Farrar will compete at the Tour de France this year without chief lead-out man of four years, Julian Dean who has moved to the new Australian-based ProTeam GreenEDGE to work with Matt Goss.

South African Robbie Hunter has returned to Garmin after a one-year stint with RadioShack and is likely to replace Dean in Farrar’s sprint train.

“There was certainly a discussion because I definitely wanted Julian to stay,” Farrar said.

“I was very happy working with Julian but I totally get it. GreenEDGE is an Australian team but it’s still kind of an Oceanic project and I really understand his draw to that. I don’t fault him at all and I still consider Julian a really good friend.”

Oman, like Qatar, is an opportunity for Farrar and Hunter to learn to work together once more albeit in a different way.

“I already have a lot of trust in Robbie; he has years of experience and a pretty impressive resume but having ridden with him I have a good feel for his tactical decision making,” Farrar said.

“You just need to build that trust in each other and learn to read the minute body language and anticipate each other really well.”

Farrar says he was unsure of what he wanted to do after the Giro last year and for the first time in four years returned to the United States during the season.

He was on the edge of missing the Tour before making an executive decision to return to training ahead of cycling’s biggest race and with a tribute to Weylandt in mind.

“I didn’t ride my bike for a while and then finally I got to this point where I was like, well, if I’m still going to ride the Tour I basically need to start training today or it’s not enough time and it’s not going to happen,” Farrar said.

“I called (team manager Jonathan) Vaughters and I said, ‘Look, I want to try. I don’t know if it will go well and I’ll be totally honest with you if I start training and it’s not going well, I’ll tell you and I won’t go’.

“He was great, he said, ‘Okay, here, we can give you this race program and it’ll be hard but see what you can do’.

“As it was I went to the Dauphine and suffered like a dog just to get through it and get the training. I wasn’t going to force it, if it wasn’t working and it was making me feel worse I wasn’t going to do it but in the end it helped a lot.”

Farrar didn’t start the seventh and final stage of the Criterium du Dauphine with his best result a sixth place in stage four. Four days after Dauphine finished Farrar went on to win a stage at the Ster ZLM Tour before presenting for the Grand Depart the next month.

Garmin’s unwavering faith in its star sprinter was not misplaced and when Farrar won his maiden individual stage of the Tour - a day after claiming victory in the stage two team time-trial - he dedicated it to his friend with a ‘W’ victory salute.

As Farrar points out, the first Tour stage win is, as they say, in general the hardest.

The American fast-man has started all three GrandTours in as many years but this year plans to skip the Vuelta a Espana with the Olympic Games road race, which he has never competed in, in mind.

But at this point in the New Year he is just focused on the immediate aims.

“I tend to try and break my season into blocks and the first block is the Spring Classics,” he said.

“The Giro and the Tour are on my race program but I’m not really stressing about them too much yet.

“I want to be 100 per cent focused from two months ago up through Paris-Roubaix, then I’ll give myself a little break, reboot and look toward the next goal, which is the Giro and then get through the Giro, do it over again and look towards the Tour.”

Twitter: @SophieSmith86

Sophie Smith is in Oman as a guest of Amaury Sport Organisation