Vincenzo Nibali has been close to a victory in the last few editions of Liege-Bastogne-Liege, most notably in 2012 when he was the strongest rider in the race but was passed on the final climb into Ans by future teammate Maxim Iglinskiy to finish second. 

Now the Italian on the Astana team is hoping that he has built his form up enough to win the Belgian Monument, which is in its 100th edition this year.

“I’m not sure about my condition for Liège yet. It’s going to be a difficult race, that’s for sure,” Nibali told Cyclingnews.

The 29 year old finished 23rd but had just finished winning the Giro del Trentino only two days before the event and he hopes that missing out on his title defence in Italy has given him the chance to get another good result in Belgium.

“I’m on a very different race program to last year when I was building towards the Giro. It wasn’t ideal because I’d just done the Giro di Trentino on the Friday and had to fly here, so what with the travel and everything, I certainly wasn’t at my top end of my form for Liège.”

Nibali has been quiet in the opening part of the season and this continued in the first two races in the Ardennes. He was 52nd in Amstel Gold last Sunday and followed that up with a pleasing 14th in the uphill battle on the Mur de Huy in Wednesday’s Fleche Wallonne. As a result of this anonymity, he is very careful about branding himself a favourite for Sunday’s race.

“This year it’s difficult to say if it’ll be a good race for me. This year I feel good, but riders like [Alejandro] Valverde (Movistar), [Philippe] Gilbert (BMC) or [Michal] Kwiatkowski (Omega Pharma-Quick Step) surely have slightly better race condition because they’ve done a bit more racing than me this season. We’ll see.”

Nibali is part of a strong team that features the 2012 winner Iglinskiy as well as 2012 3rd place finisher Enrico Gasperotto, who won Amstel Gold in 2012 too and looks on form, and the Danish strongman Jakob Fuglsang, a man who played key roles in many of the Schleck brothers’ Ardennes Classics victories.