Laurens Ten Dam believes Mathieu van der Poel can contest for Liège-Bastogne-Liège - "Perhaps he is now so well trained and trained that he can survive those climbs"

Mathieu van der Poel has won the World Championships, Milano-Sanremo, Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix. He has only two more monuments left to conquer in road cycling and the one he could more realistically contest is Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Laurens Ten Dam believes he could prepare for that this spring.

"Mathieu wants a lot. He is now in Denia, where he has been cycling on the road for two months... He wants to be good in the Tour de France, but two weeks later the Olympic road race is on that course in Paris with those cobblestones," Laurens Ten Dam said in the Live Slow Ride Fast podcast. "That's perfect, but one week after the Tour is the Olympic mountain bike race. That is far from perfect, because you have spent three weeks on the Tour and the preparation leading up to it. Then you don't have enough time to touch that mountain bike, but it is still his first love. I wouldn't be surprised if the Olympic mountain bike race is a hit, but Mathieu remains Mathieu."

Most likely, the Dutchman will race the European Championships in Romania this coming May on the mountain bike and race a few events leading up to Paris after the spring. If he is to race the Tour de France, very likely he will abandon it early on in order to prepare for both events which he plans to take part in. All of that however takes place after the spring, where he should pursue success in the same classics that he's battled for this year, but could also go for the Ardennes in search of other valuable triumphs that are not yet in his palmarès.

"I can only welcome it if he gives Liège a try. Flanders is a maximum of five minutes per climb, in Liège you go to eight to ten minutes. That's a long time, but perhaps he is now so well trained and trained that he can survive those climbs and sprint with Remco Evenepoel," Ten Dam, a former pro and compatriot of the Alpecin-Deceuninck rider, argued. "But Remco had not been able to do anything in the past two years.'"