Wout Poels will be one of the few former winners of this year's Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday, but the Bahrain Victorious rider will take a new approach to the final round of the spring classic.

Inspired by teammate and 2023 podium finisher Santiago Buitrago, the Dutch rider will complete his five-day preparation for Liège-Bastogne-Liège at the Tour de l'Alps with Tadej Pogachar (UAE Team Emirates ), Tom Pidcock (Ineos Grenadiers) and Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin Deceuninck).

Poels, now a 36-year-old veteran, will make his 11th start at La Doyenne on Sunday, eight years after scoring the biggest win of his career in a group sprint over Michael Albasini and Rui Costa when he was with Team Sky.

He often finished races in the Ardennes in three consecutive races, but after his Colombian teammates raced in South Tyrol and Trentino, Poels decided to follow suit after an excellent third place in 2023.

He has not finished in the top 10 in Liège-Bastogne-Liège since 2019, but hopes that will change on Sunday after flying from Italy to Belgium after the Tour of the Alps concludes on Friday.

"Hopefully it will be a good prelim, but everything will be very tight. It worked out well for Santi [Buitrago] last year, so hopefully it will work out for me," Poels told Cycling News. [Liège-Bastogne-Liège has changed my cycling life.

Poels' only monumental victory came during his stint as one of Team Sky's superdomestiques, who worked tirelessly to help Chris Froome win four Tour de France titles.

Pinned to his Instagram is a post from that day in 2016, with the caption "So this was really not a dream... " with the caption.

Poels joked that he was not too eager to return to racing in Walloon after witnessing the hellishly cold weather that saw 44 people finish the Flèche Wallonne, despite running a tough wet stage in Austria on Wednesday.

"Winning at the Monument is a really great thing to have your name behind you," he said.

"But hopefully the weather will be better than it was at Fresh on Wednesday.

No matter how Buitrago fared last year, Poels is well positioned to perform in Liège. The Colombian finished eighth overall in the 2023 Tour of the Alps, while the Dutchman is currently in third place, 48 seconds behind Juan Pedro Lopez (Lidl-Trek), who won stage 3.

He is also working for young Italian Antonio Tiberi, his teammate also 48 seconds off the lead. They have a chance to try again on Friday for the overall win.

After the Liege-Bastogne-Liege race, Poels will begin final preparations for the Giro d'Italia, looking to follow up his breakaway successes in the 2023 Tour de France and Vuelta a España with a brilliant Grand Tour stage win.

Poels is Belgian superstars Wout Van Aert (Visum Ries-a-Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Quick Step) in the summit finish of the Tour de France's Saint-Gervais Mont-Blanc in 2023, He won the group sprint at the summit finish of the Vuelta a España's Guadarrama, his best breakaway victory of the season on two occasions.

He changed as a rider in 2019 after trading his domestique role with Team Sky to pursue his own ambitions in Bahrain Victorious, but it was not an immediate transition to victory for the Dutchman, who in 2022 at Ruta del Sol, three years of winning It was only the end of a drought.

"Last year we were of course great in the Tour and the Vuelta, and that was a bit of the reason why we changed teams," Poels admitted.

"It took us four years to achieve that, but that's very good. Of course, the big goal this year is to win a stage in all three Grand Tours in the Giro.