After bouncing back from his Tour de France crash with a victorious ride in the Vuelta a Espana, Alberto Contador hinted that he would like to try winning all Grand Tour events one season. The Tinkoff-Saxo leader quickly realized, though, that such challenge might be too big for him even while competing with two healthy legs, and thus decided to name the 2015 Giro d’Italia his first objective of the season before approaching the French three-week event.

Russian team manager encouraged Contador’s main rivals to follow the same, extremely demanding race schedule next year, but even though Chris Froome found it “interesting”, insisted that nothing will be decided before the route of the 102nd edition of la Grande Boucle is announced.

Tinkoff Saxo owner Oleg Tinkov and sports director Stefano Feltrin both encouraged other Grand Tour contenders to follow the same race programme as Contador and ride the Giro-Tour double in 2015, aware that the 31-year old Spaniard will otherwise contest the latter three-week event much more fatigued than his closest rivals.

Froome, who shared Contador’s fate at this year’s Tour and has been narrowly beaten by the Spaniard at the Vuelta, considers his race programme as interesting but refused to share his own plans before routes of 2015 Grand Tours are announced.

“Alberto doing the Giro is an interesting one,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s a bit early to say which races I’m going to ride before the Tour, having not seen the route. I’m really eager to see what the route is for the 2015 Tour de France.

“At the end of the day, any participation in the big races is going to be up to the team and it’s down to Sir Dave [Brailsford, the Team Sky principal] to decide who races in what events.”

Most cycling enthusiasts expected to witness close battles between the 29-year old Briton and 31-year old Spaniard in biggest stage races of the 2014 season, but apart from the Criterium du Dauphine – in which Froome, unsurprisingly, crashed while surrounded by a weak Tinkoff-Saxo team Contador was eventually outsmarted by Andrew Talansky (Garmin-Sharp) – the duo never clashed while being in the top disposition.

Team Sky leader expects Contador to be his biggest rival again in 2015, with raising start Nairo Quintana (Movistar) also welcome to join the fun.

“I have learnt a lot about Alberto this year,” he added. “He really was my biggest rival this year in pretty much all the races I went to.

“In the Vuelta, even though he had a big setback the same as I did in the Tour, he came back just as strongly, if not stronger. He is definitely going to be the benchmark going forward.”

“A race like the Tour de France deserves to have the biggest riders go over there for that battle for the yellow jersey,” he added. “As it was in 2013 in the Tour de France, with Contador, with Quintana, [Alejandro] Valverde, [Joaquim] Rodriguez, most of the biggest rivals – that’s what makes it a more prestigious race, being able to go up against those guys.”