Liège–Bastogne–Liège 2020

The road

At the start

Alaphilippe's first day in rainbow

The Ardennes have been shoved into October and thinned out: Amstel is cancelled, La Doyenne clashes with the second stage of the Giro, and last year's winner Jakob Fuglsang is in Sicily. What is left is deep enough. Julian Alaphilippe rides his first day in the rainbow jersey and is everybody's favourite; Marc Hirschi won Flèche Wallonne on Wednesday; Roglič and Pogačar have brought the Tour with them.

How it was won

1. 193 km to go

   The endgame begins

   Nine riders have been up the road since the first quarter of an hour and the gap has been shrinking all afternoon. On the Côte de Mont-le-Soie the peloton finally lifts: nine climbs left in ninety-three kilometres, and everybody knows which of them matter.

2. 283 km to go

   Alaphilippe on the deck

   Just over the top of the Côte de Wanne a crash takes down several riders and the world champion is among them. Alaphilippe gets back on, gets a new bike, gets another, and rejoins visibly rattled — a bad way to arrive at the hardest hour of the day.

3. 347 km to go

   Schär alone

   The break has come apart and Michael Schär has ridden off the front of what is left of it, alone over climb after climb. Only when Deceuninck-QuickStep take the front again on the Col du Maquisard does his lead start to come back.

4. 435 km to go

   Nothing happens on La Redoute

   Schär is caught on the lower slopes of the climb that has decided this race a dozen times. Sunweb start it, Deceuninck finish it, and Dries Devenyns rides so hard on the front that not one favourite dares come round him. Fifty riders crest La Redoute together.

5. 514 km to go

   Alaphilippe lights the Roche-aux-Faucons

   Five hundred metres from the summit of the last climb, the rainbow jersey finally moves, and after five cagey hours the race exists. Marc Hirschi and Primož Roglič claw him back inside three hundred metres; Tadej Pogačar comes across on the descent; Michał Kwiatkowski hangs on over the top and is spat out on the drag beyond it. Four men, thirteen kilometres, and Liège below them.

6. 64 km to go

   Mohorič nearly steals it

   The four slow to a crawl, each watching the others for the sprint — and out of the descent comes Matej Mohorič, who catches them, passes them, and for a few hundred metres is winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège on his own.

7. 7At the line

   Arms up, and beaten

   Alaphilippe uses Mohorič as a lead-out, launches, and lifts both arms clear of the bars — and Roglič comes past his right shoulder into the photo finish. Hirschi second, Pogačar third, the world champion fifth after a relegation for his line, and a Slovenian wins his first Monument three weeks after losing the Tour.

The result