IN- DEPTH: LIÈGE- BASTOGNE- LIÈGE
After years of predictable finishes, organisers A SO moved the finish of Liège-Bastogne-Liège away from the climb into An sand back to a flat city-centre finale. Was it a success?
The oldest monument had a new route in 2019. We look at how it affected the racing and result
Ever since 1992, when Liège-Bastogne-Liège switched from its city centre finish to an uphill finale in the suburb of Ans, quite apart from the impact on the racing, there has been one unexpected consequence. Op-ed pieces in the sports sections of the French-speaking Belgian newspapers began to appear, invariably pleading for the route of cycling’s oldest monument to be changed back. “Rendez-nous La Doyenne. Give us back our ‘old lady,’” - the nickname of Liège-Bastogne-Liège - the articles would demand. But even if, when translated, the requests sounded like somebody’s mother had been kidnapped rather than being the collective defence of a time-honoured race route, their message remained clear. The newspaper op-eds reflected the widespread feeling that the finish in Ans had cauterised the racing in Liège, reducing the fight for victory on too many occasions to a colourless, disjointed, small sprint.
So the morning after La Doyenne’s return this April to its old central Liège finish, with its final ascent of the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons once again well outside the city, it was hardly surprising that the mood amongst the local media was a very different one to previous years.
“The ‘old lady’ has found her burning heart again,” - a pun on Liège’s nickname as ‘La Cité Ardente’ [the burning city] - wrote one of Walloon cycling’s best-known journalists, Eric Clovio, in Sudpresse.
“The purpose of the Côte de la Redoute” - Liège’s most emblematic climb - “to whittle down the favourites has once more been revived. The strategic manoeuvring we expected on the Côte de La Roche-aux-Faucons has intensified, and once again, it all culminates with a liberating, last-ditch effort on the boulevards where [four times Liège winner] Moreno Argentin, all too often, managed to pour cold water on all the enthusiasm of [Belgian world champion] Claude Criquielion.”
But was changing the finish back to central Liège really such a big deal? Emotionally at least, for the local Ardennes fans and riders, the answer has to be yes.
This year, La Doyenne’s most experienced racer was modern-day classics giant Philippe Gilbert, who grew up in Remouchamps a stone’s throw away from La Redoute, raced his first Liège in 2003, won it in 2011 and has taken part in it more than a dozen times.
“I have to tell you,” Gilbert said in his pre-race press conference, “that I am very happy to be disputing my first ‘real’ Liège-Bastogne-Liège, with a start and finish in Liège. Now I'll be able to say at least I did it once. Finishing up there in Ans was a bit sad.”
Gilbert also promised that the newly revised Liège would be “more dynamic” and he drew a virtual finish line at the top of the Roche-aux-Faucons, saying “whoever has 20 seconds at the summit will be the winner”.
Gilbert’s second prediction, at least, proved to be correct. On the steeper lower slopes of the Roche-aux-Faucons, a lengthy high-speed surge by Astana’s Jakob Fuglsang enabled the Danish rider to extricate himself from the pack. While red-hot favourite Julian Alaphilippe of Deceuninck-Quick Step suddenly found Liège was a race too far for him and floundered behind, Michael Woods of EF Education First and Bora-Hansgrohe rider Davide Formolo were the only two able to follow. A second acceleration by Fuglsang on the relentless false flat leading to the summit saw him shake off the Canadian, and a third surge did for Formolo. From then on, with Liège visible for the first time, only the fast, sweeping downhill with a few technical curves - one of which saw Fugslang lose control of his bike and nearly come a cropper - stood between the Dane and his country’s first victory in La Doyenne since Rolf Sørensen in 1993.
As final battles went, Fuglsang riding the rest of the field off his back wheel was impressive. But tactically, the 2019 Liège still lacked any of the exquisitely uncertain, cliffhanger finales of the late 1980s and early 1990s prior to the finish at
Ans. It’s impossible, for example, to grow tired of watching the 1987 edition, when Argentin, clad in his rainbow jersey, forged past an over-calculating Stephen Roche and Criquielion in the final metres.
Yet the presence of three unfamiliar faces on the 2019 podium - Max Schachmann, Formolo’s team-mate, overhauled Woods and claimed third - strongly suggested that no matter how it had been won, this year had witnessed a radical rewrite of previous Liège hierarchies. Intriguingly, too, this power shift did not permit Deceuninck, the team which had dominated the classics right up to the previous Wednesday’s Flèche Wallonne victory with Alaphilippe, to finish off with a win or top three in the final monument of spring.
However, neither Alaphilippe nor Deceuninck (as defending champions with Bob Jungels) were the new-style Liège’s biggest victim: that was a fourtimes winner and the most successful expert in the Ans finish, who made the lowest of low-key exits a good two hours before the finale. The sight of Alejandro Valverde, so muffled up in dark Movistar gear he was barely recognisable, shuffling his way to the comfort of the team car with over 100 kilometres left to race, had a similar feeling of the end of an era. Overwhelmed by the combined effects of a beating in Flèche and a training crash a couple of days later, the grizzled Spanish face who had all but come to epitomise
the Ardennes classics for over a decade suddenly faded out of the running.
What was left of the peloton found themselves facing not just a new finale, but a radically revised middle section of Liège, too. For the first time since 2015, the return of a traditional trio of brutally difficult climbs in quick succession, the ‘trilogy’ of the Côtes de Wanne, Stockeu and Haute-Levée, provided the younger pros with their first major innovation.
The revised Liège course was not the only key development in this year’s Ardennes week. Amstel Gold produced possibly the most enthralling finale of the race’s 54-year history, and, with hindsight, one which easily eclipsed its more venerable Belgian counterpart in terms of interest. The late addition of Michał Kwiatkowski to the breakaway duo of Fuglsang and Alaphilippe as the leaders turned left onto the long, finishing straight to Valkenberg provided one unexpected slice of excitement. But what added an injection of last kilometre adrenalin was the even later arrival of a group containing Mathieu van der Poel, who then ripped out of the mini-peloton for an utterly unpredictable, thrilling win.
Did the route make a difference at Amstel, too? Certainly the fizzed up 2019 edition was at least partly due to Amstel once again distancing its final climb, the Cauberg, to 18km to go, as they have done since 2017. But the unintentional breakdown in reliable communications with race radios, which seemingly hit a coverage blackspot - the jury is out on that particular question - just when Alaphilippe and Fuglsang needed accurate time references on their pursuers, also seemed to help.
What the Dutch race showed Liège is that it almost always takes a couple of years for big changes to a route to reveal their full impact. So whether Liège is now a better race cannot, yet, be decided - although it looks that way initially. The same goes for Flèche, which also had some alterations, with the addition of another ascent of the
Cherave and the
Ereffe climbs prior to the first time of three up the Mur de Huy, making for nine climbs in the last 77km. This year most of the damage done by the new climbs was on the descents, with Roman Kreuziger, Domenico Pozzovivo and Adam Yates all falling. But a final-lap move of
30, requiring all of Movistar and Deceuninck’s efforts to pull it back, suggests that sooner rather than later we might just end up seeing the first breakaway to succeed on the Mur since Igor Astarloa beat Aitor Osa in 2003.
At Liège, meanwhile, it wasn’t just the riders who were grappling with an unfamiliar route. While there was the usual turn-out at the start outside the Palais des Évêques, the crowds did not flock to the streets of Liège. The freezing temperatures and heavy rain probably had an effect, and so too the abundance of locations to get to from Liège like the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, which was heaving with fans. That the finish line was just a few yards away from the Taverne d’Avroy, a restaurant that is a favourite of Eddy Merckx, was a happy coincidence. A much bleaker one was the finish’s proximity to a sidestreet where flowers lay in memory of three people killed in a terrorist attack in May 2018. But these two locations were also reminders that if returning La Doyenne to its roots can in any way help Liège gain a little more civic pride, that surely is important.
As for the longer-term signs how the race might be changing, consider David Gaudu. According to his Groupama-FDJ team, his sixth place made Gaudu the youngest rider to finish in the top 10 since Steven Rooks, aged 22, won in 1983. In a year where new kids on the block have shone in so many top races, that suggests Liège has a new lease of life, too.
NO MATTER HOW IT WAS WON, THIS YEAR WITNESSED A RADICAL REWRITE OF LI È GE HI ERA CHI ES