Liège–Bastogne–Liège 2016

The road

How it was won

1. 1167 km to go

   Racing into the blizzard

   Snow is falling heavily across the Ardennes and the organisers have already cut five kilometres from the route to dodge the worst of it. The Côte de la Roche-en-Ardenne is the first climb of a day that will be decided as much by cold as by legs.

2. 282 km to go

   Movistar squeeze the break

   Etixx-QuickStep and then Movistar grind the escape's lead down over the Saint-Roch and onto the Côte de Wanne. With 84km left the gap is four minutes and shrinking.

3. 360 km to go

   Snow turns to rain on the Rosier

   On the long drag of the Col du Rosier the snow gives way to steady rain. Thomas Voeckler counter-attacks alone from the bunch while up front De Marchi shatters the breakaway near the summit, leaving him, De Gendt and Edet with 1:50.

4. 418 km to go

   Etixx light the fuse

   La Redoute passes with almost no movement in the frozen bunch, but the 15km run to the Roche-aux-Faucons is fought at a fearsome pace. Grivko attacks, Etixx drive the descent, and the last survivors of the break — Edet and De Marchi — are finally swallowed.

5. 56 km to go

   Betancur, bare-legged, on Saint-Nicolas

   Carlos Betancur, astonishingly racing bare-legged in the cold, attacks on the approach and again on the climb itself. The pace is enough to drop Vincenzo Nibali and Simon Gerrans outright.

6. 63 km to go

   Albasini rips the race open

   The new 600-metre cobbled wall of the Rue Naniot does exactly what the organisers hoped. Halfway up, Michael Albasini surges out of a group of twenty-five and the gradient does the rest — only Samuel Sánchez, Rui Costa and Wout Poels can hold him. Valverde is left stranded mid-group, and with nobody left to chase, the race is decided in a few hundred metres of cobbles.

7. 7At the line

   Poels ends Sky's Monument wait

   Wout Poels launches first into the final left-hand bend in Ans and holds on as Albasini fails to come round — the biggest win of the Dutchman's career, and Team Sky's first ever Monument.

The result