Liège–Bastogne–Liège 2022

The road

At the start

Pogačar gone, and La Doyenne wide open

Tadej Pogačar, tipped as the major favourite, withdrew at the last after a bereavement in his partner's family, and the oldest Monument is suddenly anybody's. Julian Alaphilippe carries QuickStep's ruined spring in the rainbow jersey, with 22-year-old Remco Evenepoel beside him. Wout van Aert makes his Liège debut a week after Roubaix. Alejandro Valverde rides his last, chasing a fifth win to equal Merckx.

How it was won

1. 175 km to go

   The Stockeu cuts the break to six

   Through Stavelot with seventy-five kilometres left, the escape's six-minute cushion is inside three. The Côte de Stockeu and the Haute-Levée in quick succession leave only Armirail, Moniquet, Vanhoucke, Ourselin, Doubey and Wirtgen out front.

2. 260 km to go

   The race changes on the road to the Rosier

   A mass crash on the fast run-in to the Col du Rosier takes down two-thirds of the peloton. Julian Alaphilippe is among the heaviest fallers and the world champion abandons; Bardet and Urán go out with him. Valverde, Mollema and Pidcock spend the next twenty kilometres chasing back on.

3. 340 km to go

   Landa throws four punches

   Bahrain Victorious step up their onslaught on the Côte de Desnié and Mikel Landa attacks four separate times. Each one is covered immediately, but the aggression does its work: the bunch is down to forty riders entering the final forty kilometres.

4. 429 km to go

   Evenepoel goes on La Redoute

   The oldest Monument is supposed to reward patience. Evenepoel sits in behind his QuickStep team through the steepest ramps of the emblematic climb, then unleashes a vicious attack near the summit that nobody even tries to answer. He is 22, and his rivals will not see him again until the podium.

5. 521 km to go

   Across to the last man standing

   Picking his way past the stragglers of the break over the unclassified Sprimont, Evenepoel catches Armirail with twenty-one kilometres left — thirty seconds up on a reduced peloton being driven by Ineos, Movistar, Jumbo-Visma and Bahrain.

6. 615 km to go

   Seated up the Roche-aux-Faucons

   He hits the foot of the final climb with thirty-eight seconds and drops Armirail the instant the gradient stiffens. Then, on one of the hardest walls in the Ardennes, he climbs the whole thing seated. From the summit the result is simply not in question.

7. 7At the line

   Evenepoel wins his first Monument

   He rides into Liège alone for the biggest victory of his career to that point — and the first act of a year that will end with him in the red jersey in Madrid.

The result