Wout Poels will be one of a handful of former winners at this year’s Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday, but the Bahrain Victorious rider is taking a new approach to the final Classic of the spring.
The Dutchman has taken inspiration from teammate and podium-finisher in 2023, Santiago Buitrago, by completing five days of preparation for Liège-Bastogne-Liège at the Tour of the Alps before taking on Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates), Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
The now-veteran, 36-year-old Poels will make his 11th start at La Doyenne on Sunday, eight years after he took the biggest win of his career in a reduced-group sprint ahead of Michael Albasini and Rui Costa while riding for Team Sky.
He has often completed the Ardennes races as a trio of races but after his Colombian teammate found great form with third in 2023 after racing in South Tyrol and Trentino, Poels has opted to follow suit.
He has not taken a top 10 at Liège-Bastogne-Liège since 2019 but hopes that will change on Sunday, after flying to Belgium from Italy after the Tour of the Alps ends on Friday.
“I hope it's a good prep but it's all gonna be very tight and it's a little bit of a gamble for myself but we will see. Last year it worked pretty well with Santi [Buitrago] so hopefully, it will work well for me also,” Poels told Cyclingnews.
“It’s always nice to go back, Liège-Bastogne-Liège changed my cycling life of course.”
Poels’ only Monument triumph came amid his stint as one of the super domestiques at Team Sky who worked tirelessly to help Chris Froome take four Tour de France titles.
Pinned to his Instagram page is the post from that day in 2016 with the caption “So this was really not a dream…”
It will of course be a tough ask to beat the modern-day superstars of professional cycling but Poels knows just what it takes on those brutally long days in the saddle.
Despite riding a tough wet stage in Austria on Wednesday, Poels joked he wasn’t too eager to get back to racing in Wallonia after seeing the hellishly cold conditions that saw only 44 men finish Flèche Wallonne.
“To win a Monument is really nice to have behind your name so for sure that race is always pretty special,” Poels said.
“But hopefully, the weather is better than Wednesday in Fleche, it was looking really cold.”
If Buitrago’s performance from last year is anything to go off, Poels is well on track to perform at Liège. The Colombian was eighth overall at the Tour of the Alps in 2023 while the Dutchman currently sits equal-third, 48 seconds off the lead of Juan Pedro López (Lidl-Trek) after the Spaniard won stage 3.
He’s also been working for young Italian Antonio Tiberi, with his teammate also 48 seconds off the lead. They’ll have one more chance on Friday to try to snatch the overall victory.
After racing Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Poels will begin his final preparations for the Giro d’Italia, where he will be chasing a stage win to complete the illustrious Grand Tour set after his breakaway successes from the Tour de France and Vuelta a España in 2023.
Poels took two of the finest breakaway wins of the season in 2023, beating Belgian superstars Wout van Aert (Visam-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-QuickStep) on the summit finish to Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc at the Tour de France and then the reduced-group sprint to Guadarrama at the Vuelta a España.
He’s a changed rider after swapping his domestique role at Team Sky to follow his own ambitions at Bahrain-Victorious in 2019, but it wasn’t an immediate transition into winning for the Dutchman with a three-year win-drought only coming to an end at the Ruta del Sol in 2022.
“Last year was amazing of course with the Tour and the Vuelta and that was a little bit of the reason why I changed teams,” Poels admitted.
“It took four years to achieve that but it's super nice to have. Of course this year the big goal is going to be at the Giro to have a stage in all three Grand Tours and I think we’re really good on track for that.”
