Talented all-rounder Grace Brown has described Australia's four-pronged women's road cycling team as like "one person on different bikes" and believes its collective strength can dethrone the powerhouse Dutch.
Brown and dual world championship medallist Amanda Spratt will lead the team alongside Tiffany Cromwell and Sarah Gigante when the 147km race begins on Sunday.
"I think we're a really good unit, the four women who are here have all got the same focus and combined goal," Brown said.
"We are equally happy if Sarah Gigante gets in a move and goes to the line and gets a medal then amazing, if it's Spratty or myself or Tiff, the goal is to get the best result that we can as a team.
"We have a plan and a race strategy with specific roles for each of us and we're all on board with that.
"We have talked at length about the road race and various aspects of it from a strategic perspective and we're all on the same page.
"We're basically one person with different abilities on different bikes."
Brown acknowledges the Dutch team led by defending champion Anna van der Breggen and superstars Marianne Vos and Annemiek Van Vleuten will be tough to beat but says it's possible.
"It is difficult because they've basically brought a team of winners, but that's also one of their weaknesses in that they don't have any workers and there are certain situations they will have to sacrifice someone and if they don't then they'll lose the race," she said.
"So I don't know how they're going to manage that and it's something we can work with, instead of trying to match them we can work around them and race really smart.
"I think despite them having such a strong team we can still compete against them and be hopeful."
Brown and Spratt both crashed out of the Giro Rosa earlier this month but avoided serious injury to make it to Tokyo.
"We both came down in the same crash on Stage 8 of the Giro, and Spratty road the next day but had an old injury flare up a bit and decided it was in her best interests to recover from that and she's completely fine now," Brown said.
"I made the decision to not start the day straight after that crash because I hurt my shoulder and I've been doing quite intense rehab on that in the past two weeks.
"In the last day or two it's been feeling really good and not affecting me at all so I'm confident that's not going to slow us down."
After Sunday's road race, the 29-year-old will turn her attention to the individual time trial on Wednesday where she is also a medal chance.
"I have equal interest in both events, I think for the time trial you have to plan a lot more for it so I've focused a lot on my preparation," she said.
"But my motivation is equal for the road race and I'm excited for that."
