Key Takeaways: Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024

Breaking down the key moments of Tadej Pogačar's steamrolling of the competition en route to a sixth career Monument victory on Sunday at Liège-Bastogne-Liège

In a jaw-dropping display of raw power and tactical mastery, Tadej Pogačar crushed nearly all of the sport’s top hilly one-day riders to clinch his second Liège-Bastogne-Liège title and sixth Monument victory after unleashing an unstoppable attack on the punishingly steep slopes of the Côte de la Redoute in the ancient Ardennes mountain range of Belgium’s Wallonne region. Over a minute behind, the wily Romain Bardet showcased his tactical nous to take an impressive second place, while Mathieu van der Poel demonstrated his remarkable versatility by winning the sprint in the chase group behind to take the final spot on the podium. To expand on my initial thoughts from Sunday after the race, I’ve broken down the key takeaways from the final spring Monument below:

Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024 Top Ten
1) Tadej Pogačar (UAE) +0
2) Romain Bardet (dsm-firmenich PostNL) +1’39
3) Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +2’02
4) Maxim Van Gils (Lotto Dstny) +2’02
5) Aurélien Paret-Peintre (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale) +2’02
6) Mauri Vansevenant (Soudal Quick-Step) +2’02
7) Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ +2’02
8) Alexey Lutsenko (Astana-Qazaqstan) +2’02
9) Pello Bilbao (Bahrain-Victorious) +2’02
10) Thomas Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers) +2’02

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Liège-Bastogne-Liège Race Notebook

100.3km-to-go: As the race starts to enter its extremely difficult and position-dependent final 100 kilometers, the teams of the key pre-race favorites are working incredibly hard to keep their leaders at the front and ahead of any potential crashes and/or splits in the bunch.

99.5km: At the same time, Mathieu van der Poel, who was previously at the front with the rest, is now at the back after having gone to the team car to drop off a few layers of warming clothing, and is dodging crashes as he sits near the back of the field.

98km: With IPT setting a hard pace on the front as teams fight for position heading into the first major climb, a crash in the middle of the peloton causes a split, which strands Van der Poel behind.

79.4km: Despite Van der Poel’s Alpecin team hitting the front of the chase group, the gap to the IPT-led peloton, which quickly catches and passes the early breakaway, is well over a minute. UAE, which has been sitting back on the flatter sections, hits the front with Domen Novak to increase the pace.

78.8km: Tom Pidcock, who has been stranded in the chase group after a flat/mechanical issue, attacks from the Van der Poel on some extremely steep slopes, apparently sensing that his best chance of bridging the gap is with a small, elite group, not the Van der Poel chase group.

73km: However, while Pidcock makes impressive headway and makes solid progress to the lead group, the Van der Poel chase group catches the steady draft of a few team cars and quickly makes up significant ground. Both Pidcock and Van der Poel make contact with the front group a few kilometers later.

34.8km: With the rest of the UAE team having fallen by the wayside, Domen Novak hits the decisive climb of Côte de la Redoute at the front. Knowing Novak will run out of gas any moment, which will kick off Pogačar’s attack, EF’s Ben Healy is sitting as far up in the group as possible without being on the front, with Pogačar sitting directly behind him. Despite knowing Pogačar and UAE’s entire pre-race plan revolves around attacking on this climb, Van der Poel is buried further back in the field, making it much more difficult for him to respond when Pogačar inevitably goes.

34.8km: As soon as Novak’s pace eases off and they are about to enter the steepest part of the climb, Pogačar attacks. Outside of Richard Carapaz, almost no other riders mount a response, knowing that even attempting to follow Pogačar on such steep slopes is a virtual death sentence.

34.3km: And, sure enough, with Pogačar still in the saddle tapping out what, for him at least, is a controlled pace on the 11% slopes, Carapaz begins to explode as he struggles out of the saddle to muster every bit of strength he has.

34.1km: As Pogačar crests the steepest part of the climb and gets close to the false flat up and over the top, he already has a seven second gap to the chase group. For comparison, Remco Evenepoel, after following wheels over the steepest slopes, attacked at this point in last year’s race, but was marked by Tom Pidcock.

31.3km-29km: The significance of having an established gap over the top of the climb comes into focus when Pogačar is able to explode it open to a minute over the slow-rising terrain in the handful of kilometers afterward. When Ben Healy attacks the chase group and pulls out Romain Bardet, which kills any cooperation in the group, Pogačar’s win is all-but ensured.

12.8km: Bardet dumps the rest of the second group when he attacks on the extremely steep Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons (they are shortly after eaten up by chasers), while Van der Poel suffers near the back of the chase group behind.

9.4km-5.4km: The chase group gets within just five seconds of Bardet, but a lack of agreement on who will close down the final few meters causes the pace to stall. Van der Poel, looking like a new rider, takes advantage of this slowing in the pace by charging across the gap and into the main chase group.

Finish: Pogačar rolls down the final straight and over the finish line to grab his sixth career Monument. Despite taking the pace all the way off in this final straight, he still finishes 1’39 ahead of Bardet in second, which is the largest margin of victory in 44 years.

Chase Group Finish: Close to half a minute behind Bardet, who got a well-deserved second place, Van der Poel wins the sprint from the chase group to take the last podium spot and spoil the chances of any up-and-comers like Maxim van Gils and Aurélien Paret-Peintre of bagging a Monument podium.

Five Key Takeaways

The first three takeaways are my initial post-race thoughts sent to premium subscribers directly after the race on Sunday

1) Tadej Pogačar: With the entire peloton knowing exactly what was coming and where Pogačar was going to attack, they were still unable to offer up even the slightest resistance when the Slovenian superstar unleashed a brutal attack to ride clear on Côte de la Redoute, which has emerged as the go-to launching pad for this race in recent years.

• Outside of confirming that the two-time Tour de France winner is the sport’s premier one-day rider (and its best all-around rider), it gave him his sixth career Monument victory at just 25 years of age, which ties Van der Poel (who is four years older), and sets up what could be one of the best career-long back-and-forth one-day rivalries.

  • However, even more impressive than his sixth win is that he has done it in just 13 career Monument starts, which means he is winning major one-days at a higher rate than his main rival, Van der Poel, and the all-time great Eddy Merckx (who had three wins through his first 13 Monument starts).

  • It may be tempting to wonder if Pogačar would have been capable of the same dominance had Remco Evenepoel been present, but the fact that he set a new record time on la Redoute, which was eight seconds faster than Remco Evenepoel’s time from last year, likely tells us what would have happened even if the defending champion was on the start line.

    • Furthermore, his win rate in 2024 is a staggering 70% (seven wins out of ten starts), and, as I’ve mentioned multiple times in the past, this one-day stuff is still a part-time gig, with Pogačar’s main focus of 2024 being the Giro d’Italia/Tour de France double (which has been considered impossible to accomplish in modern times).

• Despite the fact that after Strade-Bianche, I said we shouldn’t let these one-day achievements delude us into thinking he should be the favorite to win the Tour de France, with Jonas Vingegaard likely missing the race altogether, Pogačar has to be now considered not only the favorite to win the Tour, but also to complete the near-impossible Giro/Tour double.

  • At this point, it seems like the only thing that can stand between Pogačar and the double is a crash.

    • Considering how common they are in modern cycling, his UAE team could be wise to consider skipping the Giro d’Italia entirely and keeping Pogačar in bubble wrap until the opening stage of the Tour in late June.

2) Team UAE’s Simple Strategy: I could attempt to break down his ride in great detail, but he and his UAE team came in with a very simple, yet effective plan. This was to stay out of trouble at the front, and make the race as hard as possible on every climb prior to the brutal Côte de la Redoute (which sports an average gradient of roughly 10%) before launching Pogačar at the base of the decisive climb.

• The team’s singular focus of wearing down the competition meant that when Pogačar attacked, the race was over within minutes as he turned a lead of a few seconds at the summit to one of over a minute just five kilometers later.

  • In particular, the tireless work of Pogačar’s countryman, Domen Novak, who was a journeyman rider struggling to make a decent salary just two seasons ago, both did early work to sap the legs of their rivals by setting a hard pace on the climbs, as well as being key to setting up his eventual race-winning move.

• Of course, some of this steamrolling can be attributed to Pogačar’s superior fitness and raw ability, but his UAE team’s knack for transforming from a rag-tag bunch that often struggles to work together when Pogačar isn’t present into a well-oiled machine behind a single rider when their leader is with them was always key to setting up this victory.

  • A key piece of their ‘operation fatigue’ strategy was staying at the front, even as far out as 100 kilometers to go, when their rivals, like Mathieu van der Poel, were hiding in the draft near the back.

    • Some might feel it was unfair or in bad taste for UAE to pace with IPT to keep the Van der Poel/Pidcock group off the back after a crash caused a split in the bunch with roughly 100km, which forced them to expend significant amounts of energy to chase back on, but, staying at the front was a major energy investment, and this was simply collecting their dividends.

3) Mathieu van der Poel: Somewhat understandably, the Flanders-Roubaix double winner looked far less sharp than he did during the early portion of his Classics quest, but through savvy, patient riding and unbelievable raw strength, he still managed to salvage an impressive podium after closing down a group inside the final 10 kilometers.

• This lack of pop in his last two races makes perfect sense and highlights why no rider has ever completed the Flanders-Roubaix-Liège treble in the same season.

  • However, his incredible ride to salvage a third place means he is one of the few riders (if the only one) to finish on the podium at all these races in the same season.

    • In fact, his podium finish means he joins Wout van Aert (2022), and his father, Adri van der Poel (1986), as the only riders in modern cycling to finish on the podium of both Paris-Roubaix and Liège in the same season

      • Additionally, the Van der Poel father-son duo is the only two riders I could find to podium at Flanders, Roubaix, and Liège in the same season.

    • This high finish also means that through 18 Monument starts, his worst-ever finish is still just 13th (2020 Milano-Sanremo), which highlights his historically superior strength, versatility, and racecraft.

      • Also, his two career starts at Liège have now netted him a sixth and third place, which suggests winning this race and getting closer to the rare task of winning all five Monuments is a real possibility.

• While Van der Poel did a great job of managing his effort well to claw his way back into podium contention after Pogačar blew up the race on la Redoute with 35 kilometers to go, one of the reasons he had to do so with conservative poise is that he spent a massive amount of energy chasing back on between 98 and 71 kilometers to go (even with the help of multiple team cars) due to slightly lackadaisical position management that saw him sitting at or near the back while Pogačar and his UAE team were diligently staying at the front and out of trouble.

  • As smooth as Van der Poel and his Alpecin team looked through their victorious run at three straight Monuments, the last two weeks, and, in particular, having their leader personally drop back to the team care to take off layers, showed that even the best run teams are oftentimes at the mercy of their superstar’s desires and whims.

    • In short, if Van der Poel wants to go from the front to the back, of the peloton at a critical point in the race to take off leg warmers, no amount of preparation or planning on the part of team management can stop it.

4) A Few Emerging Trends: Pogačar’s dominant ride to victory laid bare the fact that the sport is currently experiencing an ever-accelerating unprecedented age of domination by an elite few riders. For example, outside of riding to a solo victory with the largest margin of victory at Liege in the last 44 years, Pogačar’s win marks the 13th time in the last 16 Monuments that one of Van der Poel, Pogačar, or Evenepoel has won, and even within that elite group, an even more elite hierarchy seems to be forming, with Pogačar winning three out of his last four head-to-head one-day races against Van der Poel and his last two over Evenepoel, who has never finished ahead of Pogačar in a Monument that Pogačar has finished.

• Another interesting evolution on display today is the rise of the solo attack by the pre-race favorites. This trend has been brewing for a while, with 11 out of the last 14 Monuments being won by solo attacks, but it has accelerated lately, with eight out of the last nine Monuments being won by lone riders.

  • In fact, even Van der Poel and Pogačar used to win Monuments from small elite groups, with Van der Poel’s first two victories and Pogačar’s first three coming due to successful sprinting efforts out of small front groups.

    • However, in the time since, both of their combined seven most recent Monuments wins have come from solo attacks.

  • It sounds reductive, but the main reason for this, outside of a consistent lack of clashes between top-tier riders, appears to be that a small collection of the sport’s best riders have realized that instead of dealing with the complications of outfoxing a small group at the end of a race, they can bypass the potential issues associated with that by eliminating their competition on the point on the course where they superstar abilities allow them to distance the rest of the bunch.

    • And, with so many riders at or near the same level forming large chase groups behind, the chase groups are actually less motivated and in turn slower, than if there was a collection of three or four key rivals cooperating.

      • This means that once these superstars attack, since their teams have already shed nearly every key rival of their teammates, there is almost no hope of reeling them in.

• While the top Classics hopefuls used to follow a well-trodden path of sharpening their skills and form through build-up races before peaking for their main goals, this season has seen the complete destruction of that tradition, with two of today’s top three riders using extremely unconventional runs into the race.

  • For example, today was Pogačar’s first day racing in Belgium this season, with him opting out of the traditional Classics lead-in races, while both he and Van der Poel are employing an ‘only wins’ schedule strategy, where they skipped any minor build-up races and only compete with they are attempting to add to their big game haul.

    • So far in 2024, Van der Poel, through only seven total race starts, has three wins, five podiums, and six top tens, while, through only ten stars, Pogačar has six wins (plus a GC victory) and eight podiums.

      • And, breaking with tradition even further, instead of hunkering down in Belgium for a Classics block, Van der Poel has been commuting back and forth from his home in Spain in between each of his major races to take advantage of warm weather mid-week training instead of contending with the elements.

5) Superstar Dominance is Obscuring a Few Interesting Narratives: The consistent dominance of a handful of riders through the spring has hidden multiple notable results and failures that deserve at least a passing mention since they will likely resurface later in the year.

• Romain Bardet: The 33-year-old former wunderkind netted only his second career Monument podium with an extremely savvy late-race attack.

  • Despite logic dictating he had no chance of holding off the massive group behind, Bardet attacked to leave the others at just the right time and kept pushing even when his gap was only a handful of meters, knowing that this was the point when a chase group is most vulnerable to in-fighting.

• The quiet resurgence of French cycling: After putting Kévin Vauquelin on the podium and six riders inside the top 11 at the mid-week La Flèche Wallonne race, France gets a massive second place at Liège and puts two more riders inside the top ten with Aurélien Paret-Peintre and Valentin Madouas.

  • The best thing about this trend for French cycling is that these results come from a wide range of riders and, most importantly, generations, which indicates a high degree of general health of a country’s talent level.

• Maxim Van Gils: The 24-year-old Belgian finishes off his spring with what must be the best campaign without a major win.

  • His 3rd at Strade-Bianche, 7th at Milano-Sanremo, 3rd at La Flèche, and 4th on Sunday at Liège speak to his wealth of talent and an ability to stretch form for an impressively long time.

• Egan Bernal: By finishing in the main chase group, and even executing a few attempted attacks, the former Tour winner has shown that he has returned to a level close to, even potentially even level to, where he was before his bad training crash prior to the 2022 season.

  • As evidenced by the delta between him and Pogačar, a rider who himself hasn’t been strong enough to win the Tour over the last two years, Bernal likely won’t ever challenge for the Tour de France again, but, with the rest of the sport’s GC contenders also consistently dropped by Pogačar and Vingegaard whenever they press the pace, he is in good company and could land on a Grand Tour podium at some point if things fall his way.

• Visma-LAB’s troubles: Almost as if they were attempting to dispel the murmurs regarding their overbearing dominance of the sport in 2023, the Dutch team finished their spring season without a podium finish at a Monument for the first time since 2019, and the first time they haven’t scored a top ten since 2018.

  • And, with them lacking a clear-cut option for the Giro, which is shaping up to be a three-week Tadej Pogačar exhibition, and their Tour de France leader, Jonas Vingegaard, looking questionable for the sport’s biggest race, things could get worse before they get better for the team.