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SKY PROCYCLING (SKY) - GBR

When World Champion Mark Cavendish signed for Sky ProCycling in 2012, the Briton said it was like ‘coming home’. For Sky Procycling, meanwhile, the addition of the world’s number one sprinter to its 2012 roster adds a major dimension to a squad that had already stepped up its game enormously in 2011.

Just like in 2011, Cavendish’s British teammate Bradley Wiggins, supported by 2011 Vuelta a España runner-up Chris Froome, will be making another all-out bid for the Tour de France. Fourth in 2009, Wiggins was said to be in the form of his life last summer but an untimely crash and broken collarbone saw the Briton taking an early flight home.

However, well before Wiggins had crashed out, his Norwegian team-mate Edvald Boasson Hagen was starting to shine, taking Sky’s first ever Tour stage win. After taking a second stage in France, the Boasson Hagen turned in a faultless August winning both the Vattenfall Cyclassics and the Eneco Tour - and at 24, ‘the Bosun’ will surely be targeting even bigger races in 2012.

Meanwhile Cavendish has three key objectives in his sights, the first of which is winning Milan-San Remo in the World Champion’s rainbow jersey, a feat last achieved by Giuseppe Saronni in 1983. He will then aim for stage wins both at the Giro and the Tour de France - with a crack at repeating his green jersey title not ruled out - before battling for Britain’s first gold medal of the Olympics in the road-race on the Games opening weekend.

‘Doing the double’ and taking the green jersey with Cavendish and the yellow with Wiggins at the Tour is a challenge so difficult the last team to pull it off was Telekom in 1997. But Sky has said categorically that that will be the ideal result for them in July. And with Juan Antonio Flecha in the Classics, and other hugely talented riders like Geraint Thomas and Richie Porte in their ranks, capturing Britain’s first ever yellow jersey - and second green - will be just one of their many ambitions for 2012.