Olympic debutant Lucas Hamilton believes Australia's men's road cycling team has all bases covered and can be in medal contention on a brutal climbing course in Tokyo .
The men's peloton will tackle a 244km course incorporating over 4800m of elevation on the slopes of Mount Fuji on the opening day of the Games on Saturday.
Hamilton will be joined on the start line by Luke Durbridge and their team leader Richie Porte while Rohan Dennis will sit out the road race to prepare for next week's individual time trial.
"It's a super-hard course, I've ridden most of it and it's really tricky, it's hot and humid and there's a lot of climbing," Hamilton said.
"With the climbing all the way up from Tokyo and to Mount Fuji, by the time we get to the steep final climb it's going to be a pretty small group and there's still 30km to go.
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"We have myself and Richie as the climbers and Luke Durbridge is the strong-man of the group, we have to be careful of moves and groups that could go away and that will be my role.
"And the final climb with how steep it is, you know Richie is one of the world's best climbers.
"It's a small group but it's good enough to cover everything I think."
Hamilton, 25, was only called into the Australian team two weeks ago when Cameron Meyer withdrew due to personal reasons, but he nearly had to withdraw himself after crashing out of the Tour de France with a shoulder injury on Stage 13.
"It took a couple of days to settle down a bit, it was a pretty hard knock but luckily enough everything seemed to heal up," he said.
"Obviously I would have liked to have left the Tour (de France) on better terms but luckily enough I got far enough into the race that I had enough load under me that I could afford to have a few days off.
"So I'm happy with how I've come out of it and how I was able to get back on the bike and recover."
Reece Homfray
