Midway through 2019, Michał Kwiatkowski (Team Ineos), who opted to skip his home race at the Tour de Pollogne, issued a darkly worded communique saying that his season "was not what I dreamed it would be."

After a year without a win since 2011 and a poor showing in the Tour de France, it is easy to understand why former world champion Kwiatkowski was not very enthusiastic about 2019.

That is not to say, however, that Kwiatkowski's few positive points from the 2019 season should be ignored. A third place finish in Milan-San Remo is nothing to sniff at, even for a former winner like Kwiatkowski.

The same goes for third place overall and the leader's jersey in Paris-Nice before teammate Egan Bernal took control of the GC. At the very least, these results show that even in a bad year, if Kwiatkowski is in the mix, he is almost certain to score points.

No surprise, then, that Kwiatkowski was free to ride down the start straight on Wednesday's first stage of the Volta a la Comunitat Valenciana with a big smile on his face and a tan from his training camp in the Canary Islands.

Kwiatkowski told Cycling News that he is determined to take on his target race this year, despite a training crash last December that delayed his 2020 debut by a month.

"The winter was half good and half bad," Kwiatkowski said. But in December, he crashed on the Côte d'Azur near Monaco and hurt his quads riding his scooter."

"So he needed two weeks of rehabilitation.

There was one clear consequence of his injury, and that was that he had to miss the Santos Tour Down Under.

"Instead of Down Under, he attended training camps in Gran Canaria: Algarve, Strade Bianche, Milan San Remo, etc."

Kwiatkowski is cautious about the possibility of repeating his early season success at races like the Algarve. But we'll see how Valencia and the Algarve go, and how the priority races like Strade, San Remo, and the Ardennes go."

"I have to say it's right on schedule. It's the first race of the season, so it's always difficult to say exactly where I am," - he says, half-jokingly.

"I haven't really run any really tough climbs on Saturdays. I lived in my hometown for a while in the winter, but it was too hard for training, and it would be hard to do that in a race in February."

Looking further ahead, Kwiatkowski brushed off the potential dilemma of returning to his home race, the Tour de Pollogne, or sticking with the Tour in July.

"I definitely want to go back to the Tour de France. Like in San Sebastian (2017) and in Pollogne (2018), I could do well in the Tour de France and win the race afterwards."

"Last year was not my best experience, but 2017 and 2018 gave me confidence." "I want to have a good run outside of the Tour for the Olympics."

Kwiatkowski is confident he can make the Tour and, despite the time difference, compete in the Olympics in Tokyo in a week.

"It all depends on how I finish the Tour. People always say it's difficult to go to San Sebastian, but it's possible even after the Tour is over and we have a party in Paris to celebrate."

"So I think it's more mental than anything else. And in San Sebastian in 2017 and Poland in 2018, my condition was even better than it was in the Tour. Either way, I have a long way to go, but that's my goal."