Arnaud Démare has announced that he will miss the next Tour de France to focus only on the Giro d'Italia. The FDJ sprinter hopes to shine on the Italian roads and thinks he will have more chance to win at the first three-week race of the season.

Interviewed by L'Equipe, he explained he was sad about his 2015 campaign. "I had good cards to play but I couldn’t put them on the table. Rather than doing the Tour, I will go to the Giro with a team built around me. I’ve tried the Tour twice and I’ve lost out there twice,” explained Démare, who failed to win a stage in his national tour in 2014 and 2015."

"I’ve got no desire to go back there to get another kicking", he added. "If you don’t have a team designed to put a sprinter in the best possible position, like Lotto who have eight riders lined out to ensure that André Greipel can save his energy before making his effort, it’s not possible to win. That isn’t likely to happen on this team as its focus is on the general classification with Thibaut."

He revealed that he has been training hard this winter. "I am more demanding of my teammates and myself. I’ve told them: ‘At Bessèges, we all need to be ready.’ I want to be ahead of the competition. 2014 was [Alexander] Kristoff’s season, 2015 was [John] Degenkolb’s. I don’t know when it will happen, but I will have a season like that too," Démare stated.