It has been a long road to recovery for Stefan Denifl of IAM Cycling to get back to his best level. CyclingQuotes caught up with the Austrian climber at the start of stage four of the Tour of Britain to ask him about his recovery and his goals for the rest of the season, and taking a view towards 2016, where he hopes he stays fit.

In 2014, Stefan Denifl produced a great start to the year, taking third on Mont Faron in the Tour of the Mediterranean, before a great seventh on GC in the Paris-Nice, where he was on the attack lots. More encouraging results followed before a bad crash in the Austrian Road Race virtually ruined his year and he only did one more race that year.

But his problems were not over, as he wasn’t able to ride until May 2015 as the problems in his knee refused to go away. He returned in Germany and hasn’t looked back. We asked him how it felt to be back racing again.

“It’s a good feeling. I started back at the Bayern-Rundfahrt in May and coming back was a bit difficult. The races were hard for me as I missed a lot of kilometres in my legs. This year, I have to see it as a step back into the bunch, the knee still feels good so I should be over the problems I had. Now I am focussed on 2016 so I want as many races as possible in my legs ahead of that season, and if I can finish 2015 with some results then it would be nice.”

If he wanted some assurace that he could still be at the top and fight for wins, the 27 year old must have been elated with his Tour de Suisse. In just his second race back, he spent all of stage five in the break collecting KOM points and after he was last man to be caught, he held on for ninth on the 10km, 10% climb up the Rettenbachferner Glacier, and this helped him secure the mountains jersey, a key objective for his Swiss-sponsored team.

He then went home to ride the Tour of Austria, where he was 12th and 10th on the two summits on hard climbs, allowing him to take tenth overall, showing he could still get results.

“I was hoping to be up there. I really liked those races and when I looked at the profiles, I saw that they suited me.”

Denifl, if he really is hunting for kilometers, made the strange decision to ride the Tour of Britain rather than the Vuelta, but he soon explained his logic to us.

“For me, I chose Britain as I have never done this race before and I always said that one year I wanted to come here and see what its like. I’m really happy I did, because its organized really well, good hotels, surprisingly good weather, we are lucky its dry and there has only been a little bit of rain. There are still eight days of racing and the stages are long, so its nice to be here.”

Having already alluded to his main aim of being back to his early 2014 form in 2016, Denifl filled us in on his goals for next season and what races he’d like to target.

“To be honest, I want to start really well and be good in spring, so every race I ride in that period I want to be really good. Its always important if you need a new contract as next year is a contract year for me. It will be really important to have a few good results between February and April and then once I have achieved that we can see what comes after in the remainder of the year.”

Stefan Denifl lit up TVs around Europe in early 2014 and he will aim to do so again. Denifl can time trial and is a great climber, so expect the Austrian to start getting some major results for IAM, as he seeks to prove that he is over his injuries and is back at the top for good this time.