ARDENNES WEEK
Ardennes Week is the annual denouement of the spring Classics season, before riders’ thoughts turn to the Grand Tours. The Giro d’italia begins just two weeks after Ardennes Week finishes.
The Ardennes races comprise two long and very hilly races at either end of the week – Amstel Gold Race and Liège-bastogne-liège – which make a midweek sandwich of the somewhat more amenable Fléche Wallonne.
Unlike their cobbled counterparts that take place a few weeks before, the Ardennes are a favoured hunting ground of the Grand Tour hopefuls. Demi Vollering and Tadej Pogačar, for example, were the winners of last year’s Amstel Gold Race, while Vollering was also victorious at Liège, with Remco Evenepoel winning the men’s race.
The Amstel Gold Race, held in the Netherlands, is the opener. Concentrated into a small but potent pocket of hills just outside Maastricht, the 33 bergs of the men’s race and the women’s 21 make for a vicious profile. Forget ‘shark’s teeth’ – this looks like something out of a horror movie.
Despite its considerable distance, Amstel Gold finishes at Valkenburg, just eight miles or so (12km) from where it begins in Maastricht. After a straightforward first 40km or so the blue touchpaper is lit in both finishes, and the action continues nearly all the way to Valkenberg, with the last classified climb – the Bemelerberg – coming around 5km before the chequered flag for the men, and the women tackling Vilt in the final run-in.
Back in Belgium, the smaller semiclassic, Flèche Wallonne, comes midweek. Next to Amstel Gold and Liège-bastogne-liège, it’s an innocuous offering, with the men’s race ducking underneath the 200km mark (only just) and the women’s pegged at 143km. But these are hotly contested and feature the double sting of the unforgiving Mur de Huy, which is steep from bottom to top, with slopes that rise to 17% in places. It always makes for a brutal, slow-motion finish, where timing the final effort is difficult yet key to victory.
Liège-bastogne-liège concludes the spring Classics season, with its monstrously difficult parcours and venerable ‘La Doyenne’ status.
It is a battle of attrition over côte after côte – hills that are steep and considerably longer than the bergs of races such as the Tour of Flanders. The toil adds up, and so does the climbing – we’re talking Grand Tour mountain stage proportions. A dress rehearsal for those taking part in the upcoming Giro.