Former World Champion Rui Costa (Lampre-Merida) ran out of gas in the final four-way battle for Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday at the end of what he called “the toughest day on a bike that I can remember.”
On a day when the peloton faced a relentlessly tough mixture of rain, snow and cold, “It was really hard,” Costa told reporters afterwards.
“It was very complicated to get through, although” - as happened in the World Championships in Italy in 2013 where a massive rainstorm left the peloton reeling early on -“when it’s bad weather, my body seems to react well. But even so, it can be complicated in good weather, you’ve got to be in good shape, too.”
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Third in Il Lombardia in 2014 and a winner of the very hilly GP de Montreal back in 2011, Costa’s second Monument podium finish of his career came after taking fourth in both Amstel Gold and Liege-Bastogne-Liege last year. A recent strong ride in the Vuelta al País Vasco and a tenth place in Fleche Wallonne suggested, as Lampre-Merida director Philippe Mauduit told Cyclingnews before the race, that Costa’s form was on the up.
“Lombardia is very hard, too, but this kind of weather makes things even more complicated, when it wasn’t cold it was two or three degrees above zero. That kind of mixture of things really changes the race and the last climb has changed the race a lot, too,” Costa observed.
“It was the toughest day on a bike that I can remember.”
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