ANALYSIS • INSIGHT • DATA

Pogchamp: Tadej Pogačar celebrates his Liège-Bastogne- Liège victory in front of Alaphilippe, Gaudu, Valverde and Woods

Images: Kristof Ramon (main), Erik Lalmand - Pool/Getty Images.

RACE OF THE MONTH / LIÈGE-BASTOGNE-LIÈGE / 25.4.21

This is the age  of the all-rounder

Remember when classics specialist Julian Alaphilippe almost won the Tour de France? Tour de France specialist Tadej Pogacar went one better by winning Liège-Bastogne- Liège. The result confirmed what we’ve known for some time - that the era of the specialist is over and cycling is tilting back to the multitalented. It wasn’t just Liège - Wout van Aert and Marianne Vos both won Gent-Wevelgem and Amstel Gold, a double which hasn’t been achieved since the 1970s. Forget the days of Chris Froome winning grand tours and only grand tours and Tom Boonen’s season being based exclusively on April. Everybody can now do everything again.

It has also been a spring in which we’ve been reminded that cycling is a complex sport. If it were as simple as the fastest sprinter winning a sprint, Alaphilippe would have taken an overdue maiden victory in La Doyenne. However, life and bike races are more complicated than that. Recall the finish of the Tour of Flanders where the diesel Kasper Asgreen was given no chance against the much faster Mathieu van der Poel… until he beat him. The difference in both races was not only what had gone before, but one more simple fact: Asgreen in the Ronde and Pogacar at Liège were strong enough that after 250km-plus, they could tear up the form book.

On the surface, Liège 2021 was similar to last year - five riders (against four in 2020) went clear on the final climb, the Côte de Rocheaux-Faucons. That quintet included Alejandro Valverde, who’s been an all-rounder since before it was fashionable, Michael Woods and David Gaudu, plus Alaphilippe and Pogacar. Pogacar’s team-mate Davide Formolo made the initial surge on the Roche-aux-Faucons to start breaking up the lead group, and Woods attacked over the top of Formolo pulling the winning quintet clear. When it looked as if the group behind might squeeze the gap closed on the nasty drag after the Roche-aux-Faucons, Woods attacked again, reinvigorated the leaders and made the gap permanent.

EDWARD PICKERING

  EDITOR 

Ed thinks we should leave the Mur de Huy alone at Flèche Wallonne. It is what it is: one of the best single kilometres in cycling; just don’t watch the whole race.

SOPHIE HURCOM 

DEPUTY EDITOR 

Pressure, what pressure? Sophie was impressed with how coolly Demi Vollering won Liège after expert work from SD Worx. One of the riders of the spring.

ADAM BECKET

STAFF WRITER

Stating the bleeding obvious here after the spring he’s had, but Tadej Pogačar is the real deal. He’s so young and powerful, and Adam wonders if he will keep improving.

Geoghegan Hart pulls the Ineos train on La Redoute, splitting the field

The politics of the lead group weren’t complicated. Alaphilippe and Valverde had the best reputation as sprinters, though the Frenchman does look to have been operating just a few percentage points below his effervescent best in the last year or so and Valverde is, let’s not forget, 41. And it’s best never to underestimate Pogacar, as the cycling world found last summer - his final TT win tends to obscure our memory of the rest of the race, but he did outsprint small groups