They are the patrons, and their grace is so great and so stingy, of opera dizos, the frequency with which they show it that their mere participation turns a race into an event, which becomes exceptional when both coincide, as it will be this Sunday Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the queen of the Ardennes, and the oldest monument of cycling (since 1892, when the bicycle was a recent invention, on the calendar), where the long-awaited, so necessary and so rare duel will be settled , Mathieu van der Poel-Tadej Pogacar. Two friends.
More than 110 days of 2024 have passed and only in six, six one-day races, has Mathieu van der Poel put on the number to compete on the road. Six one-day races, chosen with the same spirit of José Tomás, who before deciding whether to fight a bullfight, visits the bulls proposed in the field, looks them straight in the eyes and the response, the chemical reactions, that they receive their neurotransmitters in the brain it will dictate a yes or no. And the chemistry of feelings hardly deceived Poulidor’s grandson, who won in his style, long attack, superior solitude, three pavé and mountain classics – E3, Flanders and Roubaix -, came second in the Ghent-Wevelgem and tenth in the Milan-San Remo after helping his friend Jasper Philipsen win. Precisely the Classicissima, and for a month now, the most open and most complicated monument to master, is the only race in which it has coincided so far this year with Pogacar, almost even scarcer. Although the Slovenian has more days of competition (nine), he has only participated in three races. Two in one day (victory like Pogacar, or like Van der Poel, the same seal, the same superiority alone from any distance, in the Strade Bianche; a third place in the San Remo) and seven days in a Volta that turned into a repertoire of mini-classics: four stages won in their style and the general, of course.
They both win the same by saying goodbye to a perplexed and defeated platoon when their legs tell them so. Some journalists ask Pogacar, who hopes to reach Liege — “my favorite monument,” he says — again three years after his victory (in 2022 he did not participate due to the death of his father-in-law; in 2023 he fell and retired: in Evenepoel won both years), if what awaits us, what the fans want, is that both, at the same time, hand in hand, attack 300 meters from the top of La Redoute, as Merckx liked, 35 kilometers away of Liège, and they risk it in the final stretch next to the port. “Don’t even dream about it,” warns the Slovenian. “This is neither Roubaix nor the Strade. And it will be a very open race. “It won’t just be the two of us.”
La Decana (254 kilometers, the 10 elevations, and a col, nine of them, the loudest, Forges, Stockeu, La Redoute, La Roche aux Faucons, the most marked by the great names of cycling, Merckx, Hinault, piled up in the last 90 kilometers) will, accidentally, be an almost perfect clearing to leave the stage and the spotlight on the couple. The mother of all cycling falls of the century, the Olaeta descent in Itzulia, left Primoz Roglic and Remco Evenepoel, two of the riders, injured and still in rehabilitation. Fantastic Six (with Pogacar, Van der Poel, Van Aert and Vingegaard) who have revolutionized cycling in the decade, two regulars in the places and always brilliant in the hills and valleys of the Meuse.
The Belgian has won the last two years (the last one, the one with the fall of Pogacar that frustrated another duel that should have been memorable), while the Slovenian won at the Quai des Ardennes in Liège in 2020, in what was perhaps the founding act of the call Pandemic Generation. It was the race that Julian Alaphilippe (short-lived member of the fantastic group: two World Championships, several tremendous falls and au revoir) celebrated early by raising his arms. Roglic extended the bike under the Frenchman’s armpit, while Hirschi, second, hindered Pogacar, third, after the Frenchman’s subsequent disqualification. Fourth was Mohoric. That October 4 (the only autumn Liege, due to covid) recorded Van der Poel’s only participation in Liege. He finished sixth, just 14s behind the quintet that played for victory in a route in which the climbers who later succeed in the Tour never do poorly and in which perhaps he cannot highlight his outstanding technique and his crushing pedaling on the pavé. of exorbitant power in very repeated but never very long efforts. Pogacar territory, as well as Flanders, is Van der Poel territory (and Pogacar defeated him there, in his Old Quaremont, in 2023). They are gods. Nothing human (although apparently inhuman) is impossible for them. “If I wasn’t sure I could win I wouldn’t even be here,” says the Dutchman. In his viewfinder, the fourth notch of a monument on his stock (he would only need Lombardy for the plenary session) and Merckx’s 1973, the year in which the Cannibal won in Flanders, Roubaix and Liege. No one, neither before nor since, has achieved it.
Liege, the monument of Valverde’s four victories, is the classic in which the Spanish, so climbers, have felt less strange. It should be the land of Carlos Rodríguez and Juan Ayuso, the young people who established themselves in Itzulia, but they will not be there. It does not fit into his calendar, nor into that of veterans like Enric Mas. Nor will Mikel Landa, always a regular in the Ardennes, who broke his collarbone in Itzulia. The young Roger Adrià (outstanding in the Amstel) and the veterans Pello Bilbao and Ion Izagirre will carry the weight of Spanish representation in the Dean. On Tuesday the 23rd, in Romandía, Mas and Ayuso will resume their path towards the Tour.
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