Emerging superstar Michael Matthews will skip the Australian summer with his year built around getting his first Tour de France stage win, continued success at the Giro d'Italia and aiming for the spring one-day classics as well.
His Orica-GreenEDGE boss Shayne Bannan said Matthews' fellow Canberran Mathew Hayman, who is the team captain, was one of the most underrated riders on the professional tour.
Half of the GreenEDGE team, including Hayman, assembled for a pre-season camp at Nagambie, in country Victoria, on Saturday and they'll ride up to Canberra through Jindabyne, before undertaking testing at the Australian Institute of Sport.
But Matthews is still in Europe, where the other half will have their own camp near Varese, in northern Italy.
Matthews will skip the Aussie summer, which includes the national road race championships in Ballarat in January and Adelaide's Tour Down Under a few week's later.
Instead, he'll resume racing later in the year with his main targets beginning in March - the spring classics before moving on to the Giro and then making his Tour debut.
Bannan said Matthews was developing into one of the best cyclists in the world and had enormous potential if his progression continued as it has in recent years.
After announcing himself to the world at the 2013 Vuelta a Espana, where he won two stages and wore the sprinters' green jersey, he then won two stages at the Giro and wore the leader's jersey for six days.
Only a cruel training crash just days before the start of the Tour de France prevented him from making his debut this year, before he won a stage at the Vuelta and wore the leader's jersey there as well.
"He's developing to be one of the better riders in the world, so we just want to keep that level of progression going," Bannan told Fairfax Media on Saturday.
"We're pretty confident he'll be featured in some major successes again next year, given the rate of progress at the moment.
"There are stages in the Giro and the Tour de France that he'll be targeting next year as well as developing him for the one-day classics.
"Based on what we saw this year, he has enormous talent, enormous potential to be a pretty outstanding rider for the future."
Bannan said Hayman would play a role in developing all the young riders at GreenEDGE.
But Hayman has specialised in the one-day classics like the Paris-Roubaix and his expertise will be invaluable for Matthews.
Bannan felt Hayman's talent was vastly underrated.
One of the reasons Hayman signed for the Aussie cycling team was for the chance to debut in this year's Tour, but it didn't go to plan and he was forced to withdraw from the world's most famous race on the 10th stage.
Afterwards, the 36-year-old told Fairfax he knew he might never ride in it again.
But Bannan has opened the door for him to return.
"He's quite an outstanding athlete, outstanding person and I think he flies under the radar, but he's certainly an outstanding contributor to our team and he's our team captain," he said.
"He's certainly in the squad that will be in consideration for [the Tour].
"He's a great leader and he takes a lot of the young guys under his wing."
Orica-GreenEDGE will stay in Jindabyne on Tuesday before arriving in Canberra the following afternoon.
