In 2013 Enrico Gasparotto may have failed to win a big classic like he did in 2012 when he beat all the major stars in the Amstel Gold Race but the Italian claims to have been stronger than ever. Next year he hopes to end his string of near-misses in the biggest of the Ardennes classics, the Liege-Bastogne-Liege, where he has twice won the sprint for the minor placings.

When Enrico Gasparotto became a surprise Italian champion in 2005 at just 23 years of age and wore the maglia rose at the Giro d'Italia two years later, the Italians started to hope that they had found a new big classics stars. He followed his strong showings by a marvelous 2008 season in Barloworld colours where he finished 2nd in the Tirreno-Adriatico, won the Ster Elektrotoer overall and shone in the Driedaagse van de Panne.

From there he escaped into anonymity at Lampre and only showed glimpses of his talents in his first years with Astana where he arrived at the start of the 2010 season. That year he won a stage in the Tirreno-Adriatico and was 3rd in the Amstel Gold Race but his results were rather inconsistent.

In 2012 he proved that he is still a genuine Ardennes contender when he became a hugely surprising winner of the Amstel Gold Race. One week later he was third in the Liege-Bastogne-Liege behind his race-winning teammate Maxim Iglinskiy.

Those performances reminded everyone that they needed to take Gasparotto seriously for the big one-day races in 2013. While he failed to repeat that outstanding win, it was a year of confirmation that also provided him with the consistency that had so often lacked in past seasons. He was 9th in Amstel, 7th in GP Montreal and hit peak condition for the end of the season when he was 5th in Il Lombardia. Once again he won the sprint for the minor placings in Liege, this year finishing 6th in the oldest classics of them all.

Those results make him regard 2013 as "the best season of his career performance wise" as he told Spaziociclismo in a recent interview. "[I was] very strong in all races, with the Tour de France being the only exception."

It is no wonder that his 2013 results have provided him with renewed confidence for the classics and in 2014 he hopes to finally reach the top step of the most prestigious of the Ardennes races.

"In the last two years I have won the sprint for the minor placings in Ans [where Liege finishes] and I would like to improve on that," he said. "Then I want to check out the new course for Sanremo which become much more interesting for me but the one that I prefer and know best if the Liege, the classic par excellence."

Gasparotto has already finalized the schedule that should allow him to reach the classics in peak condition.

"I will start in Australia with the Tour Down Under and then make a training camp in Mallorca which is perhaps the biggest change from past seasons as I has never done so before," he said. "Then I will have an altitude training camp to prepare for the most important events, those where I have done well over the years like the Paris-Nice, Milan-Sanremo, Tour of the Basque Country and then Amstel and Liege."

Later in the season he hopes to return to the biggest Italian race after missing the event in 2013.

"It is too early for me to talk about the grand tours as I have other objectives," he said. "But I would like to do the Giro d'Italia, especially because I am from Friuli where the race will end. It will be an extra motivation."

Gasparotto has failed to receive much recognition in his home country but has now accepted his fate and is happy to live a more anonymous life. Nonetheless, he clearly feels that he has been overlooked by the Italian media.

"I'm the Italian which has been most consistent in the classics in recent years," he said. "Even in the WorldTour ranking, I am the Italian who has scored most points in one-day races. If it hadn't been for the penultimate stage, I would have ended in the top 15 in this year's Paris-Nice without even going for GC as I was riding to win a stage. In the great classic I always arrived at the finish with the second group. I hope for a similar performance next year, maybe with a bit more luck to get a big result."

Gasparotto was 45th in this year's WorldTour rankings.