Samuel Sánchez targets Tour de France podium, world road championships and London Games

Samuel Sánchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi) is hoping that 2012 is just as successful as the past season has been.

A winner of a stage at the Tour de France and the King of the Mountains jersey, the reigning Olympic champion says he still has some unfinished business in his career.

For 2012, he will be taking aim at the Tour podium and the world championships, without putting too much pressure on himself for the London Olympic Games.

“I would like to win another stage at the Tour without forgetting about the podium,” Sánchez told the Spanish daily MARCA. “We’ve heard different things about the Olympic course in London, but it’s a one-day race and anything can happen.”

Sánchez said his KoM jersey didn’t come from just luck, but said the sensations of standing on the final podium in Paris was very different than winning the gold medal in Beijing nearly four years ago.

“Of the mountain stages, I won one, took second in two other and fourth in the other. It wasn’t just luck, I deserved it,” he said. “To climb the Tour podium as first in one of the classifications is something unforgettable, but you already know a day or two before it’s going to happen. In Beijing, however, everything was very fast. It was unexpected and more intense. I felt more happiness in the Olympics.”

Sánchez says that the Tour will remain the top goal for the 2012 season, though he’ll try to win on home roads at the Vuelta al País Vasco in April and at the world championships in Valkenburg, Holland.

Twice fourth at the worlds, Sánchez says he hopes to break into the medals this year.

With the Olympics and worlds on tap following the Tour, Sánchez says he will skip both the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a España this year.

“I’ve always said that one year I’d like to do the Giro and Vuelta, but 2012 is an Olympic year and to prepare for the Games it’s best to race the Tour, because there’s no training better than that,” he said.

“In 2013, maybe I will race the Giro to try to win a stage and be at the front. And later the Vuelta, because after winning five stages and finishing second and third in the GC, the only thing that’s missing is the victory.”

His contract with Euskaltel-Euskadi ends at the end of 2012, but so far he’s not giving much away about where he might land. He’s spent his entire pro career with the Basque outfit — Sánchez is the team’s lone non-Basque rider — and he’s suggested the only way he would leave the team would be if it closed down.

FILED UNDER: Road TAGS: London 2012 Olympics / Samuel Sánchez