Lidl-Trek will be without Tour de France GC leader Tao Geoghegan-Hart, who suffered a direct hit from COVID-19 and fractured ribs, and the team has reset its race goals.

Stage Hunt will be the goal, with Toms Skudzins, 2023 mountain champion Giulio Ciccone, and two-time stage winner Mads Pedersen leading the US team.

Pedersen, a former world champion, has won a stage in each of the last two Tours.

Philipsen won the overall green jersey last summer in Paris, 119 points ahead of Pedersen, and he has made a return to the competition a goal this year.

Pedersen spoke about the points prize at a Lidl Trek pre-tour press event at the Lidl Supermarket outside Florence on Thursday.

"I'm climbing really well. Jasper is still a faster sprinter than me, but I want to get as many points as I can and be in contention for the green jersey."

"Of course, the green jersey comes with winning as many stages as possible. Let's see what happens."

Pedersen won the opening sprint stage at last month's Criterium du Dauphiné and did a lot of work for team leader Ciccone in the closing mountain stages.

He lost weight, but not enough to hinder his top-end sprint speed, he said.

"My weight is down a little from last year. I did a little more training in the mountains in addition to sprinting and motor pacing. I'm used to climbing in training, which helps a little bit when I start climbing in races," Pedersen said.

"The speed is still there. I don't want to get so good at climbing that I lose my sprints, because I definitely don't want to get so good at climbing that I lose my sprints," Pedersen said.

"But being good at climbing doesn't mean you'll score enough points to win the green jersey. To do that, you have to win the sprints or at least be at the front every time. Last year, I often finished 8th or 10th in the early stages, or something like that. That is not enough. To be in contention for the green jersey, you have to be in the top three or five in every sprint."

Pedersen revealed that he contracted COVID-19 in the aftermath of the Dauphiné, but said it did not interfere with his preparation for the Tour.

"Some people get infected and some don't. I was off the bike for a few days and needed the rest anyway."

The 206-km hilly course runs from Florence to Rimini. The stage has seven mountains, including three second classics, and 25 km from the finish is the 7 km, 4.7% Côte de San Marino.

This stage may be too tough for pure sprinters. He and Lidle-Trek will give it their all, even if their chances of opening day success depend on the actions of their rival teams.

"We have a chance. It doesn't make sense not to try now that we don't have a GC member."

[34 Everything should work in our favor because we'll be pushing the envelope, if not over it, but it would be foolish to just sit at the bottom and say, 'OK, we can't do it anymore.'"

"I'm not going to sit here and say, 'Yes, we can win on that stage. If I have to get a result, it depends on how all the teams want to run the final climb. So it is in their hands whether I succeed or not. Especially the UAE: ...... If they go for the win from day one and go full on from the bottom to the top, I won't survive.

"We'll just have to see what the situation is like at the top and then see if we can do damage control or not. We can talk about it for hours, but in the end it's what happens on Saturday."

Whatever the outcome of this weekend's first stage of the Tour, Pedersen's focus for the next three weeks will be on racing rather than the Paris Olympics in August.

Of course, the Paris road race will be a major goal for him as he looks to add gold to his 2019 rainbow jersey, but his Olympic preparation will largely follow last year's schedule, when he completed the Tour and finished fourth at the Glasgow World Championships two weeks later

"I think I've got a lot of work to do.

"Right now I'm here for the Tour and I'm focused on the Tour, I'm here for the Tour and I'm focused on the Tour," Pedersen said. I think it's good for me to keep racing hard, like I normally do at the Tour. I think that's the best preparation for the Olympics." [Last year we saw the World Championships again, but at the same time it is held two weeks after the Tour. So after the time trial in Nice, I'm going to focus on the Olympics."

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