Dan Martin has shown fantastic form all season and has been close to winning all of his major objectives so far in Fleche and Catalonia. Now the Irishman aims to make his mark by taking a second Liege title tomorrow.

“At Liège-Bastogne-Liège, there are so many things that can happen during the day, so you need to be flexible,” Martin told Cyclingnews. “You could maybe miss opportunities. You might say you’re going to wait until a specific moment to attack but maybe the perfect moment comes a kilometre before and you miss it because you’re thinking too much of what you’d planned before the race.”

The Etixx-QuickStep rider says the world’s oldest race is all about being patient and waiting for the perfect time to strike out for glory.

“It’s a waiting game. It’s such a long, hard race, and you pay for any mistakes all the bits of energy you can save in the day it helps for the finish, for the explosiveness in the finish, it helps,” Martin said. “And it also helps to be strong in your head because even now with the new climb they added and the Côte de Ans, if you look up too far, you don’t even see the top. Or you see the top and it seems so far away. After 250 kilometres, it’s easy to think you’ll never get to the top, your legs are finished. It’s a long game of poker.”

Just like they did in Fleche, Martin and teammate Julian Alaphilippe will form a potent duo for the Belgian squad, and martin says the two will once more work well together.

“We both intelligent tactically and we can ride well together. I think the headwind will negate the race and that might be in our favour, if we’re both together in the last 10 kilometres,” Martin said. “I think the new course actually favours the more explosive guys like me and Julian rather than the climbers, because we have the three short climbs in the last 8 kilometres. The longer climbs are further from the finish now so maybe it will be tougher for the GC climbers to win now.”