The fourth of the five sacred monuments of cycling, Liege-Bastogne-Liege (April 26) brings the curtain down on not only the Ardennes classics, but the spring classics as a whole.

With that in mind there will be a huge fight amongst teams to end the campaign with bragging rights as the in-form climbers contest one of the hardest races on the calendar.

The 253-kilometre route is trimmed by 10km from last year's centenary edition. That doesn’t make "La Doyenne" any less difficult, with a more compact cluster of climbs in the closing stages meaning recovery time will be less ahead of the famous run-in.

Team Sky send a strong squad to Belgium, hoping to improve on a best finish of fifth in the famous race (Rigoberto Uran, 2011). Philip Deignan, Nathan Earle, Sergio Henao, Vasil Kiryienka, Lars Petter Nordhaug, Danny Pate, Nicolas Roche and Kanstantsin Siutsou will line up at the start in Liege.

The team will be without Wout Poels who crashed in Fleche Wallonne. "Shoulder is not good, unfortunately. Monday I will go to a specialist to see how and what. Big downer," he tweeted earlier today.