With his Liege-Bastogne-Liege defence coming up next month, it is still unknown if Simon Gerrans will be able to defend his title, after suffering another bad crash this year, this time fracturing the radial head of his arm in a crash at Strade Bianche.

His DS at Orica Greenedge, Matt White, said that gerrans may return to action at the Volta a Catalunya in two weeks and have some racing done before the Ardennes Classics, but for now its too early to tell.

“A few things have to happen, but it’s still in the cards that he could race Volta a Catalunya,” White told VeloNews. “The spring classics are up in the air in the moment right now, that’s for sure.”

White said that Gerrans’ injury is unfortunate, as he had just recovered from a broken collarbone suffered during the offseason and was coming into form nicely.

“Fitness-wise, he was fine, he was in good form after training in South Africa, and he was very motivated to return to racing,” White said. “He went down on both hands, got back up, and started racing, and then he said, ‘Ooh, that’s not good.’ It was bad luck, really.”

While Gerrans is being kept off the bike until Wednesday, the team has replacements for Gerrans in the event he can’t ride the Ardennes Classics, either as a leader or at all.

“[Michael] Matthews was already going to be our guy for Milano-Sanremo,” White said. “In a worst-case scenario, and ‘Gerro’ is not ready for the Ardennes, Matthews would be our top candidate, especially for Amstel Gold. … We’ve got a sort of ‘off-the-radar’ group for the northern classics, with [Mathew] Hayman and [Jens] Keukeleire, they’re certainly not favorites, but we’ve got a group of competitive young riders. We hope to be solid in the spring classics.”

They also have guys like Esteban Chaves, Michael Albasini and Simon Clarke for Fleche Wallonne and Liege.