Info with one day to go
April 24 th 2021 - 17:26
The 107th edition of the “Doyenne” leads the riders to a finish in the city centre for a third year in a row. How many riders will still be there to battle it out after 259.1km through the Ardennes? The World Champion Julian Alaphilippe and the four-time winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège Alejandro Valverde, who will celebrate his 41st anniversary on Sunday, reignite their duel but the defending champion Primoz Roglic is ready to give his all in what should be his last race before the Tour de France. Following her 7th win in the Flèche Wallonne Femmes, Anna van der Breggen wants to double up with a third victory in Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes.
Monin: “A race of attrition”
Liège-Bastogne-Liège has returned to the heart of the “Cité ardente” since 2019, after 27 finishes held atop the côte d’Ans. The change of route had an immediate impact on the race with only 13.3km to go after the summit of the final climb, côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons. Jakob Fuglsang made the most of this ascent to claim a solo victory in 2019. Last Autumn, a group of five riders went for the decisive move and sprinted for victory in Liège. This year, we could see more riders at the front to battle it out in the finale according to Jean-Michel Monin, who designed the route: “It’s likely we’ll have 10 to 15 riders challenging for the win on the quai des Ardennes… Although Primoz Roglic should try to turn the race upside down in order to defend his title. This year, we add the côte de Desnié (km 210.8), but it’s a minor change that shouldn’t have a big impact. Anyway, the Doyenne is a race of attrition and it will stay like that: only the strongest can shine.”
“Primoz can win in a sprint and he can go solo”
Primoz Roglic triumphed in his first participation in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, last Autumn, and he’s ready for more. Jumbo-Visma’s DS Griescha Niermann makes no doubt they “want to win again. Primoz is in a really good form. I want him to go solo with 40km to go, he takes 5 minutes and we can be happy in the car, we don’t have to worry! But I think there is a big chance it will come down to a scenario similar to lat year’s, with a group of favourites for the Roche-aux-Faucons, and then we will see. Primoz showed that he’s capable of winning a sprint, and he can also go solo. On Wednesday, it was his first Flèche Wallonne. He went early because he knows that Julian [Alaphilippe] normally is a bit quicker on this type of finish. It didn’t work out but Primoz has no regrets. He’s in top shape and he’s looking forward to tomorrow.”
Matthews: “I just need to lay low”
Michael Matthews (Team BikeExchange) expressed his confidence on the eve of his fifth participation in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, a race that saw him finish 4th in 2017 and where he wants to impose his punchy and sprinting abilities with the support of Esteban Chaves: “I’m looking forward to Liège-Bastogne-Liège. I think my condition is good. I’ve just been unlucky with a few crashes. I think the weather is gonna be good, similar to Wednesday in Flèche, and that suits me better than the cold. In Flèche, we thought things might open up early with a hard race all the way to the finish line, but in the end it wasn’t. I don’t think we know exactly what to expect, but we have to be ready for everything. If there are early attacks, we have a very strong climbing team to cover this. And if it kicks out in the final climb, we also have guys for that. I just need to lay low, get through the best I can and see what I have in the finish. Other than that, we have great guys to go with the moves and make the race when it’s opened up.”
Alaphilippe-Valverde: the battle of the experts
The French World Champion has recovered his panache with a third victory on the Flèche Wallonne in his last three participations - 2018, 2019 and 2021, as he missed the 2020 edition a few days after claiming his rainbow stripes in Imola. Deceuninck-Quick-Step’s leader cements his position as an expert of the Ardennes classics, along with three top 5 finishes in Liège-Bastogne-Liège. On the roads of the Doyenne, he impressed as early as his first participation, in 2015, when he finished 2nd… behind Alejandro Valverde. The Spanish champion is looking for his tenth success in the Ardennes tomorrow but at 28 years old (Alaphilippe’s age today), he had won three. The two champions are used to battle it out and their performances on Wednesday strengthens their position as favourites for Sunday, to write together another page of history in the Ardennes.
No Pidcock but lots of options for Ineos-Grenadiers
The young British prodige Tom Pidcock won’t discover the Doyenne at 21 years old. “He’s not 100% recovered after his crash in the Flèche Wallonne. He is young and he has more goals coming so we let him recover”, Ineos-Grenadiers DS Gabriel Rasch explained on Saturday. The British squad still impressed with their collective strength on the Mur de Huy. “I think tomorrow we can be a bit more aggressive in our racing”, Rasch anticipates. “With Kwiato, Carapaz and Yates, we have three guys who can potentially be there in the final so let’s see if we can open things a bit earlier and not wait for the sprint. Tao [Geoghegan Hart] could also be there. We have a strong team and we have to use the numbers in our advantage.” Michal Kwiatkowski already climbed twice on the podium of Liège (3rd in 2014 and 2017) and Adam Yates finished 4th in 2019.
Van der Breggen aiming to close the loop with a round figure
Four days after she took her seventh and final victory on the Mur de Huy, Anna van der Breggen (Team SD Worx) aims for a third success in Liège, to make it ten triumphs in Belgium's punchiest classics before she retires at the end of the season. The World Champion already won the first two editions, in 2017 and 2018, and she showed on Wednesday her illness from last week is nothing more than a bad memory. On Sunday, she will battle it out with her compatriot Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar Team), winner in 2019. In the absence of the winner of the 2020 edition, Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafrdo), many other contenders will try to add their name to the list of winners: Kasia Niewiadoma, Elisa Longo Borghini, Mavi Garcia… Juliette Labous and Liane Lippert won’t be able to defend their chances after Team DSM returned positive tests for Covid-19. Parkhotel-Valkenburg also had to withdraw.