Liège–Bastogne–Liège 2011

The road

At the start

Gilbert has won everything this month

Philippe Gilbert has taken the Brabantse Pijl, the Amstel Gold Race and the Flèche Wallonne inside eight days, and La Doyenne is the only one left on the list. Two hundred and fifty-five kilometres out to Bastogne and back, ten côtes on the way home, and Leopard Trek can send two brothers up the road where everyone else has one rider. The last Ardennes Sunday of the spring.

How it was won

1. 1241 km to go

   Ten men up the road

   Delfosse and Herrada go clear out of a sunlit Liège and eight more come across in ones and twos — Le Lay, Kessiakoff, Vorganov, De Gendt, Gallopin, Delage, Talabardon, Frank. It is the shape the day will keep for two hundred kilometres.

2. 286 km to go

   De Gendt takes the three

   Wanne, Stockeu, Haute-Levée, one after another, and Thomas De Gendt crests every one of them first with the mountains prize on his mind. The lead is under three minutes now, and on the Haute-Levée the break comes apart while a big chase group forms behind.

3. 345 km to go

   Nobody wants to chase

   Forty-five kilometres out, Van Den Broeck has spent himself pulling alone and Omega Pharma-Lotto sit up. Nobody replaces them. The gap balloons to a minute and a half in a few kilometres, until Leopard Trek take it on and, oddly, FDJ come up to help their old teammate Gilbert.

4. 435 km to go

   La Redoute, one minute

   The gap is down to sixty seconds at the foot of the wall. Cataldo and De Gendt are shelled out of the front group, and over the next climb Gasparotto, Van Avermaet and Pineau prove themselves the best of the morning's escape and ride away from what is left of it.

5. 520 km to go

   The Schlecks go two-pronged

   Twenty kilometres out, on the Roche-aux-Faucons, the attack everyone has been waiting for arrives. Fränk goes first; Andy bridges; and Gilbert sits on the wheel and comes with them as if it were the obvious thing to do. Over the top they swallow the break, and only Van Avermaet can hang on.

6. 66 km to go

   Saint-Nicolas settles it

   Andy presses on the lower slopes and Gilbert absorbs it without changing his face, then rides to the front himself. Where the wall steepens through the terraced houses he stands up and detonates: Van Avermaet is gone instantly, Fränk barely answers, and Andy has to scramble down the far side to get back on. Two Schlecks against one Belgian, and the Belgian is toying with them.

7. 7At the line

   The Côte d'Ans

   Neither brother will attack on the last drag up to Ans; they take turns on the front instead and all but deliver him to the line. Andy opens the sprint, Gilbert goes past him two hundred metres out, and in eleven days he has won the Brabantse Pijl, the Amstel Gold Race, the Flèche Wallonne and La Doyenne.

The result