BMC team sporting manager Allan Peiper has two of Australian cycling's most prized jewels, Richie Porte and Rohan Dennis, entered in the national road championships that resume on Thursday. 
Peiper, one of Australia's pioneering European-based professional riders in the 1980s, knows for all their quality as riders, they lack the numbers to dominate the blue-riband event of the titles - Sunday's 183.6-kilometre men's elite road race at Buninyong, Victoria.
But he hopes that in Thursday's 44km men's elite time trial at Buninyong, Porte, 30, and Dennis, 25, can claim their share of glory - as they did last year when Porte, then with the British Sky team, won the national title by seven seconds from Dennis.
Peiper believes it may be Dennis' turn to win and claim the national champion's jersey, which he would then be wearing in time trials throughout the season.
Before the men's elite time trial on day two of the national titles come 33km time trials for elite and under-23 women and under-23 men, with day one, Wednesday, set aside for the criterium title races in Ballarat.
"Rohan is really motivated for this [time trial]. He'll go all out to get it," Peiper said of the 2015 Australian cyclist of the year, whose feats last year included his Tour Down Under overall victory, world hour record ride and Tour de France stage one time trial win.
"It would be super for Rohan if he could wear Australian time trial colours this year in all the big races. Having a guy of his calibre in time trials at the front end of the [overall] classification in an Australian jersey would be special for all of us."
Porte is reportedly in good shape, but he is not expected to start the season as strong as last year due to his new role as BMC's co-leader for the Tour de France, along with American Tejay van Garderen.
The Tasmanian will still try his best in the time trial and, like Dennis, in the road race, where local teams such as Orica-GreenEDGE and Drapac will have greater numbers racing than the US BMC team.
And with Dennis, Porte should figure prominently in the Tour Down Under in South Australia, which starts on   January 19.
Porte plans to come to a slow boil towards peak form in   July and then   August for the Olympic Games.
Dennis, from South Australia and also an Olympic Games aspirant, will have his sights set on making his mark earlier in the season, starting with these national titles and then in the Tour Down Under.
Looking to Sunday's road race, Peiper believes his two BMC riders will have to move earlier to have any hope. "It will be difficult to control. But if it's hard maybe they can both be there in the final, and if they could bounce off each other that could be really good. They are going to have to race early if they are going to make that happen ... in the last six or seven laps."