SLIGHTLY over a week ago Mark Stewart was in the high Alps, mixing it with the other best young riders in road cycling in what essentially is a miniature Tour de France. Tomorrow the 22-year-old will find himself on the Royal Mile, the only born and bred Scot in the field as the OVO Energy Tour of Britain rolls out of Edinburgh on a first stage which will take it the 190km down to Kelso.

I say born and bred, because the father of Tao Geoghan Hart, Team Sky’s promising young rider, also hails from Scotland but what better time for this dyed in the wool Dundonian to give the crowd something to shout about.

“Tao is a third Scottish I think, but I am born and bred!” Stewart joked. “So definitely, why shouldn’t I try to do something on the stage between Edinburgh and Kelso, try to get myself up the road. I got a taste for it last year when it was in Glasgow, when there was a phenomenal turn out.

“So I am expecting the same again if not better just because of the rate of progression within cycling in Britain. It is awesome having it here, I will hopefully have a lot of family and friends out there watching.”

Stewart was reared on Channel 4’s coverage of the Tour de France, dreaming of emulating Grand Tour icons like Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso – even if all three proved false idols with rather spectacular falls from graces.

While he has naturally gravitated towards track cycling instead, a forum where his abilities have brought an instant reward with a European Under-23 gold medal earlier this year and where his big brother Kevin is now an established part of the British Cycling coaching set-up, following in the footsteps of David Millar, Andy Fenn and Brian Smith as one of the few Scots ever gifted enough to earn their crust on the UCI world tour remains on his long-term to do list.

So doing the grunt work at the front of the peloton to set up his Great Britain team-mate Chris Lawless for a stage win on the Tour de l’Avenir (the nine-stage Under-23 version of the Tour previously won by the likes of Miguel Indurain and Greg Lemond) 10 days ago was a moment to treasure, earning him an equal share of the €1200 prize money and the promise of a meal which he plans to cash in sooner rather than later.

For the record, Stewart finished 98th in the Tour de l’Avenir GC, some 80 minutes behind eventual winner Egan Bernal – the Colombian has just been snapped up by Team Sky – but successfully stage managing that British win ion the Loire was priceless.

“Chris Lawless, our sprinter, took out a stage win and I was just a work horse really, kind of the front of the bunch chasing down break aways and doing all the dogs’ work,” said the 22-year-old.

“I still have ambitions on the road, I just think my career is taking me down the track path,” he said. “Maybe later in my career I could try and race these biggest races in the world. But for now my ambitions are on the track – I want to be world champion and I want to go to the Olympics.”

The designs which Stewart and his small An Post–Chain Reaction team have for this year’s Tour of Britain are rather more modest, small beer certainly compared to those of a high powered Team Sky delegation which includes Geraint Thomas

“Being one of the smaller teams, we are going into the race to be aggressive, to get into breakaways, to get into the climbers jerseys, the sprinters jerseys, get ourselves up to the head of the race,” he said. “Because it is hard when you are competing like Team Sky, we are a young, smaller team, physically we are just not as good as these guys.

“Including myself, we have years to develop to get as good as them. You just have to put yourself at the head of the race and hope that one or two days these guys might let their guard down, and we are in a position to take advantage of that.”