Bradley Wiggins made it clear that riding this year’s edition of the Tour de France is one of his biggest objectives of the 2014 season, alongside the Paris-Roubaix and Tour of California. The former winner of the French grand tour event surprised by claiming highly respectable top ten place in the Hell of the North, and while he is on his way to win the Californian event, his Tour appearance becomes more and more probable.

Team Sky sports director present at the Tour of California made it clear that while most of the British squad’s riders are keen to take part in their most important campaign of the season in July, the list has already been reduced to 14-15 cyclists and in-form Wiggins is one of the manes remaining in game.

"Bradley is definitely back in good form," Arvesen told Cyclingnews. "Most of the guys on our team want to be apart of the Tour team. Bradley, won it two years ago, it starts in the UK this year, of course it will be a good thing for us to have him there. Right now, our Tour de France longlist is about 14 or 15 guys."

Wiggins made it clear on several occasions that he does not intend to compete with Froome for the leadership in 101st edition of the Tour de France and insisted that he would be happy to support the Kenyan-born rider in Team Sky’s campaign to claim their third consecutive title in France.

British team’s sports manager confirmed that Froome’s leadership in the French grand tour is not under question and the older Briton has to settle for a supporting role while making it to the final Tour de France roster.

"He will be working for Froome in GC," Arvesen confirmed. "The way Froome rode last year, he's definitely it — it's Froome for the Tour. Bradley will be there to support Froome, if he wants to go, if he's selected and if he's in good form."

Even though Wiggins didn’t appear as lean and motivated since his victorious 2012 Tour de France campaign as he does now at the Tour of California, Arvesen insists that the Briton is still yet to reach his top disposition.

"He's not in Tour-form yet," Arvesen said. "If you look back at the 2012 season, when he won the Tour, he had already won Romandie and Dauphiné."

Wiggins is a favourite to win the Tour of California in Thousand Oaks on Sunday. He won the stage two time trial in Folsom and is leading the overall classification by 28 seconds ahead of Garmin-Sharp's Rohan Dennis and 1:09 minutes to Tiago Machado (NetApp-Endura) with four stages to go.