IT'S almost a week since Ben Swift swapped a British winter for an Australian summer but the 22-year-old cycle ace says he's ready, fit and raring to go in the Tour Down Under, which starts next Tuesday.

Asked to sum up the difference between home and Adelaide, the former junior rider with Scunthorpe Polytechnic CC at Quibell Park, said, 'about 50 degrees'.

Swift was recovering from a three-hour training ride in the heat of South Australia which peaked at 40 degrees at the start of the week.

"It was so hot it was hard to breathe," said Swift. "You felt it burning your throat, and we were all going about with croaky voices. But the last couple of days haven't been so hot and I'm feeling really good now and looking forward to the race."

Swift and his six Team Sky team-mates will make their competitive debut tomorrow, 48 hours before the Tour Down Under gets underway, with a circuit race in Adelaide city centre acting as curtain-raiser to the first ProTour event of the 2010 season.

The team has been incorporating race drills in their three-hour training rides, and Swift says the preparation has gone well.

"It's been going really, really well," he said.

"We've got a strategy, but I think in the race itself we'll play it by ear.

"You never know what's going to happen on the road, and as the race goes on we'll tweak things a little bit."