www.bicycling.com James Startt / Calpe, Spain

Elderly Spanish ladies clap from their windowsills or as they walk to the market. Cars honk as the Astana team breezes through the small towns and hills in the Valencia region of Spain. The locals all know that the blue and yellow colors of the Kazakh national team dress their own national hero, two-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador. And they know if they look just hard enough they might get at least of glimpse of the 27-year-old champion.

Contador seems quite happy to huddle in the midst of this hastily regrouped team. After all, only weeks ago, the future of the Astana team still teetered on the brink of collapse, destroyed by financial woes and the mass exodus of its American contingent led by Lance Armstrong. The team's January training camp is a chance to build new bridges, test out new equipment and focus on the 2010 season and its ultimate goal, a third Tour de France title.

The tensions with the title sponsor as well as those between Contador and Armstrong, the two team leaders in 2009, have been well documented. Today Contador says simply, "[The 2009 season] gave me a lot of experience dealing with difficult situations. Now I am very calm, very relaxed with all of the problems behind me. It drains your energy so I am just relieved to be able to concentrate on cycling."

At first glance, Alberto Contador may appear an unlikely candidate to follow in the footsteps of Lance Armstrong and finally upend the charismatic, multi-dimensional American super hero. He likes to smile and he clearly likes to be liked. "Winning is important," he says. "But winning with a good reputation is more important. It makes everything easier." And tensions with Armstrong aside--tensions created simply by two teammates that both dreamed of winning the world's greatest bike race--Contador does maintain a "nice guy" reputation in the European peloton.

At the same time, Contador also possesses and insatiable appetite to win. "I would be lying to you if I said that I didn't start every race hoping to win," he says. "Even when I know I am not in a position to win, I still want to." And despite his gentile demeanor off the bike, he has forged the reputation as an impulsive and aggressive champion.

For some it is a weakness. Alain Gallopin, the director that guided him through his Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana wins in 2008, said at the start of the 2009 Paris-Nice race, "If Alberto has one fault it is that he can be nervous and too aggressive." Days later Contador lost the Paris-Nice race when he bonked after forgetting to eat on the key climbing stage.

Call it learning experience. And to critics of his tactical sense Contador says, "You can be right 100 times and nobody sees it. But if you are wrong just once everybody jumps on you."

"Alberto is clearly very determined," his new team manager Yvon Sanquer says at the team hotel in Calpe, Spain, where the team is training for the rest of the month. "He is discreet and progresses with serenity, but he is clearly very determined. And although he has already won a lot of great races he is clearly still improving."

During the team training camp, Contador collects five- and six-hour rides while working out other details that he hopes will assure a stress-free season in 2010. Last Thursday he worked with his new bike sponsor Specialized and its BG Fit system in an effort to fine-tune his position and he says that power output tests show that he is producing more power than a year ago.

That is bad news for his competitors. Last July he finished the three-week Tour de France more than four minutes in front of Andy Schleck, his nearest rival, and over five minutes in front of seven-time winner Armstrong.

Contador, however, also dreams of winning other great races, classics like Liege-Bastogne-Liege, or if his time trialing continues to improve, the world championship time trial title. This year he is even tempted to race the hilly Liege classic in April if for no other reason than "to honor cycling." If he does, don't forget that Contador never starts a race that he doesn't hope to win.