Tokyo Olympic silver medallist, Campbell Stewart is targeting to go one better on the velodrome at the Paris Olympics next year.

If that happens, the 25-year-old cyclist might look back with considerable satisfaction and belief in the platform established with his monumental efforts in completing his first Grand Tour, the 106th edition of the famed Giro d’Italia.

Endurance track riders develop all-important stamina with training and racing on the road. In just his second season on the UCI WorldTour, the zenith for road cyclists, his Jayco ALUla team included him on their roster for the Giro, one of the three Grand Tours on the global cycling calendar.

By comparison, a team pursuit on the track takes less than four minutes and 16 laps of effort. Stewart, part of Cycling New Zealand’s high performance track squad, endured 3,489kms including more than 51kms of climbing through the Alps and Dolomites over three weeks in the Giro.

More than 50 riders, including gnarled veterans, did not finish.

After 21 race-days of grit and grind, Stewart sprinted to a superb top-10 finish on the final stage along the famed Via dei Fori Imperiali that leads to the Colosseum in Rome. That is a long way from his cycling roots in an around the streets of Palmerston North.

“I am pretty proud of that effort. It was definitely the hardest cycling event I have ever done,” said Stewart

“I knew it was going to be a learning curve. I knew there were going to be some tough days which I certainly had. Everything was new. I had to learn the process and getting in the rhythm of racing back to back days.

Then there was the unknown of what does the body do once you go further than say a ä week or so of racing. Where do you end up? What does the body do? Does it shut down or does it keep going? Fortunately for me it kept going.

The dark days came on week two with a gastro bug which was exacerbated by the wet and cold conditions.

“It was a wet Giro – raining for half of it. And it was so cold especially on some of those steep descents. I was running on zero energy for about three days where I was riding along – just focussed on looking down at my bike stem and grinding up those climbs that seemed to go on forever … and I was in some dark places.”

On those days Stewart finished in the grupetto, or affectionally known as the broom wagon, in a group of riders at the back of the field, spent from their duties earlier on the stage, who target the cut-off time in order to fight another day.

But he came right, and in spades over the final week, culminating in a brilliant performance on the final stage, not to mention a sterling display of power-riding on the flat on day three that played a key role in setting up Michael Mathews for the stage win.

His role was to ride shot-gun for tour hopeful Mathews, either setting up a torrid pace on the flat to blunt their opponents, or to provide the final platform for the finish sprint.

“It was a pretty awesome experience, being able to achieve something that was not easy. There were challenges every day but to tick them off day-by-day and get to the finish day stage in a good place was an awesome thing to do.

“And I got myself into the sprint finish on the final day which was rewarding.”

Stewart has headed to Switzerland this week to join some of his fellow high performance track mates under the guise of coach Adrian Hegyvary in their first track preparations towards the UCI World Championships in August.

He believes the Giro will boost his track preparations.

“In the long run, the effects that you feel on your body with something like the Giro is going to have a long-lasting benefit. To be able to transfer those benefits over to the track will be a big benefit moving forward leading to the worlds and into the Games next year.”

Stewart has one rainbow jersey to his credit at the world championships, along with three silver medals, and believes he and the team will be contenders in Glasgow in August.

“We have some good guys and big plans to chase world titles on the track – and we will be giving it our all.”

Of course, there is a weather-eye on Paris next year, and no doubt still many more kilometres for Stewart to ride.