2023-04-21 13:45:49
Published on :
Tadej Pogacar is on his way to achieving the treble in the Ardennes races. Sunday April 23, he will be the big favorite of the 109th edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. He has already shone in the Amstel Gold Race and the Flèche wallonne.
Tadej Pogacar never seems satisfied. Since the start of the season, the Slovenian has raised his arms 12 times in 18 days of racing. A statistic that is enough to give the competition heartburn as he masters his subject. His appetite remains difficult to channel for those who wish to eject him from the podiums.
Liège, the most prestigious and toughest of the three races
Wednesday April 19, four days later l’Amstel Gold Race and three weeks after Tour of Flanders, he won the Flèche Wallonne with flying colors, leaving his opponents to pick up the crumbs on the kitchen table. The new cycling cannibal, winner of his first Flèche wallonne at the top of the demanding Huy wall (1.3 km at 9.6% average), has taken another step towards a full house in the Ardennes races.
From now on, Tadej Pogacar is walking in the footsteps of the Belgian Philippe Gilbert (2011) and the Italian Davide Rebellin (2004), the only ones to have completed the three parts of the Ardennes, with the Amstel Gold Race, the Flèche wallonne and Liège- Bastogne-Liege.
« I don’t know much about statistics and I’m not really interested in numbers. Me, I do my thing. I know that Sunday, Liège, will be the most prestigious and toughest of the three races. I will go for the win. Super motivated within a very strong team. The result, we will see…”, says the 24-year-old runner, who readily indicates that his victories are “ the fruit » of are « experience “With all the same 66% success since January, and already 58 successes since the start of his career.
« We’re racing for second place »
In the meantime, the rivals are cashing in. ” We’re racing for second place commented Mattias Skjelmose, second in the Flèche Wallonne. ” Beating Pogacar was not an option. He is superior to the others, nothing can be done at the moment “, abounded the Spaniard Mikel Landa, ” super content of his third place. Since the start of the season, the presence of Pogacar, winner of the last Paris-Nice, has tended to dampen the enthusiasm of the other starters a little.
The double winner of the Tour de France (2020 and 2021), he says to himself “ happy to be in such great shape “. The competition are eagerly waiting for him to take a break after Liège-Bastogne-Liège, where he will face another phenomenon, Remco Evenepoelwho comes back as fresh as a roach from a course at altitude, for a long-awaited duel between young prodigies. Evenepoel, king of Liège in 2022 after a solitary raid, could become the first rider to retain his title since Michele Bartoli in 1998.
Then it will be time for the Slovenian Pantagruel to prepare the main course of his season: his reconquest of the Tour de France, where he had abandoned his crown last year in favor of the Dane Jonas Vingegaard.
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