His confidence buoyed by a successful comeback at the recent Herald Sun Tour in Australia, Stuart O'Grady already finds himself contemplating victory in two early season races - something he never expected to be thinking about three months ago.

It turns out Matthew Wilson, the overall winner of Australia's oldest stage race, wasn't the only one who shocked himself, the Unibet pro claiming his biggest career victory to date and doing no harm to his chances of finding another ProTour gig. In his first since that fateful day on July 15 at the Tour de France, where a wipeout on a high-speed descent almost stole his life, O'Grady has surpassed all his own expectations.

"If I can do what I did [at the Sun Tour] with two weeks of training, very minimal training, I'll be looking at the national championships and Tour Down Under pretty seriously," O'Grady told VeloNews. "You've got to keep setting objectives, and for me, that's the first step. After that, I'll have a big training camp in America with the team, and the end of that, I want to have great form whether I like it or not. And then I want to concentrate on the European season."

For a man who discovered that among his plethora of injuries, his three broken vertebrae, had they been "a few centimeters here or there", could've put him in a wheelchair, he's reluctant to talk about it. But it's not because it scares him.

"Oh, I just want to move on from it. I'm not worried about remembering it or talking about it at all - that's bike racing, everyone has a crash. I'm trying to rebuild the blocks and get my form back... I just want to get on with it. It [the crash] was a serious one, and I'm lucky to have come out of it good enough to continue racing and all the rest of it, but you know, I just don't want to come up every single time I go somewhere and talk."

O'Grady's illustrious career, which hit a euphoric high last April when he won the "Queen of the Classics," Paris-Roubaix, has been equally filled with troughs of disappointment. But each time, he's bounced back, better than before.

In 2004, he was forced to sit out the entire spring when Cofidis, his team at the time, was embroiled in doping scandals that had nothing to do with him. He came back fighting to take out his first major classic in Germany, the HEW Cyclassics, and then went on to score Olympic gold in Athens with Graeme Brown in the Madison.

At the end of the 2005 season, he thought he'd signed the deal of his life with Sony-Ericsson, which turned out to be a team based on nothing more than talk. O'Grady took a serious pay-cut to keep himself in the major leagues with Team CSC, but suffered his worst fall to date in Tirreno-Adriatico that cost him five broken ribs and a collarbone, ending his spring campaign yet again.

And now he's got a rock on his table that lets it be known he's the 2007 winner of "The Hell of the North." It's the only trophy he keeps in his house. Bringing it back to his Adelaide home wasn't easy, he grins. Most likely, looking at it each day has helped him with his most recent recovery, a process that still isn't over.

"Again, I'm just experiencing that day to day," O'Grady explained, sounding not-too-fussed about it all. "At the moment, I'm having a little bit of problem just getting food out of pocket with my right shoulder, that's still pretty sore. The shoulder's pretty messed up; I know I can race, I know I can sprint up hills and I can do everything about it, but it's going to be different when it's a six, seven hour race."

Despite the niggles, O'Grady just wants to race, but it's a fine line.

"You've got to be very careful; I want to get back to a good level, but then, I don't want to be flying at the training camp in February and be blown in April at the Classics," he said, adding that he's already spoken at length with team manager Bjarne Riis and Classics directeur-sportif Scott Sunderland about how to structure his off-season.

As for the "biological passport" to be introduced next year by the UCI, O'Grady says he's all for it.

"This and the whereabouts system is probably the most important thing that can happen to cycling,” he said. “I think we are leading the way in world sport with it.

"Privacy isn't an option if you're a professional cyclist anymore - and there's no 'ifs' or 'buts' about it. That's just the way it is, we all have to abide by the rules and guys who think they can get away with it, well, they're not. Hopefully with all the controls and all the testing, we can eventually get the trust back of the people and get on with our sport."Check out the current issue of VeloNews(No.21) for a feature on Stuart O'Grady's crash comeback.