Foldable Bikes Party: Liege-Bastogne-Liege: 10 to watch

Friday, 21 April 2017

Liege-Bastogne-Liege: 10 to watch

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Liege-Bastogne-Liege brings the curtain down on the Classics campaign and while Alejandro Valverde lines up as the obvious favourite, the Spaniard will have to fend off a strong challenge if he is to claim a fourth victory in La Doyenne. With ten classified climbs and the haul to the finish at Ans, nobody wins Liege-Bastogne-Liege by chance.

Alejandro Valverde (Movistar)

The obvious place to start. Even if his form were an unknown and he hadn’t just won La Fleche Wallonne, Valverde would be considered a top favourite.

But the Spaniard collected his routine victory atop the Mur de Huy on Wednesday to further enhance a 2017 results sheet that was already nothing short of sensational. The 36-year-old, not simply evergreen but somehow still getting better with age, has won the Ruta del Sol, Volta a Catalunya and Vuelta al Pais Vasco and as a result is already in double figures for victories – a milestone many a sprinter would settle for at the end of an entire season.

Add to that form Valverde’s record in La Doyenne – three victories and three further podium finishes – and you have a runaway favourite, certainly in the eyes of the bookmakers.

A chink of doubt comes in the form of last year’s display, when Movistar worked all day in the blizzard, only for Valverde to miscalculate the impact of the finale’s new cobbled climb, the Cote de la Rue Naniot, and miss the race-winning split. Nevertheless, you sense that’s a mistake that won’t be made twice, and Valverde has all the ingredients – a stronger climber than the fast finishers and a stronger sprinter than the pure climbers – to claim a fourth title and move to one shy of Eddy Merckx’s record.

Alejandro Valverde (Movistar)