Christian Meier’s preview of Amstel Gold

The early season has come and gone. We are now heading into the one of the most important weeks for our Orica-GreenEdge team: the Ardennes Classics. We are a team with a heavy focus on one-day races and stages versus overall classifications so these races present a huge opportunity to go after big WorldTour points. We have a team with proven contenders for these three one-day Classics. Simon Gerrans is one of the big favourites for the Amstel Gold race this Sunday. Also we have Michael Albasini for Flèche Wallonne, along with an on-form Peter Weening who will be a rider to watch all week.

I flew into Liège a few days early form Girona, Spain, so I could get out on the Amstel course with the team to preview the last 90 km. This reconnaissance is important because of the changes organizers made to last year’s course: it is now resembles last year’s world championships course. Even with a preview, Amstel is a very tricky race. With so many corners, traffic islands and different laps, it can quickly all seem very confusing. During our preview, we actually all rode with radios so the director could talk us through the crucial sections.

The evening before the race, we will have a team meeting to discuss the roles that each rider will play. For me, it is usually more or less the same. Most likely, my job will be to look after Gerrans for as long as possible, keeping him well positioned in the early parts of the race, stopping with him if he has any problems on the road and getting him into the crucial parts of the race while he spends as little energy as possible. This year, the first crucial section will be during the last 55 km to 35 km of the 260-km race. If I can get him to this point in good shape, I will be very happy. From that point on, we should still have a few guys in the front selection with Gerrans to look after him, as well as follow some of the early long-range attacks.

Amstel is a long and very technical race due to the small roads and huge amount of street furniture on the Dutch roads. Because of those features and the physical demands of the race, there is a huge amount of mental focus required. There is not much time to switch the brain off in this one. I hope we can bring everything together Sunday. With a bit of luck thrown in there, we’ll come away with a solid result.

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