The 110th edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège was undoubtedly one of the coldest ever, with temperatures initially hovering around 4 to 6 degrees. The 9 frontrunners rode in dry conditions however, before being caught up by the peloton, and it was then with a solo raid from the Côte de la Redoute that Tadej Pogačar took victory in this Doyenne des classiques! Romain Bardet (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) took a neat second place.

Summary of Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024

175 riders lined up at the start of Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024 on the Quai des Ardennes in Liège, and it was almost from the start, at kilometer 2, that the day's leading group broke away from the peloton.

It was a leading four, with Gil Gelders - neo-pro from the Soudal-Quick Step team who was discovering La Doyenne des classiques, Rémy Rochas for Groupama-FDJ, Lilian Calmejane from the Intermarché-Wanty team and Paul Ourselin for TotalEnergies. These 4 were then quickly joined by 2 then 3 other riders, to form a leading group of 9 riders, with Enzo Leijnse (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL), Christian Scaroni (Astana Qazaqstan Team), Iván Romeo (Movistar Team) who was also discovering La Doyenne, Fabien Doubey who joined his TotalEnergies teammate and finally Loïc Vliegen for Bingoal WB.
Gradually, these 9 riders increased their lead over the peloton to just over 4 minutes at the "demi-tour" in Bastogne, having already climbed the first difficulty of the race, the Côte de Bonnerue, which returned to the course for the first time since 2018.

This gap then continued to increase, reaching its maximum at 4'40" after 110 kilometers, but there were still 144.5 kilometers to go as the Liège-Bastogne-Liège course was no less than 254.5 km long (compared to 258 last year). Under the impetus of UAE Team Emirates for the ultra-favorite of the race, the peloton gradually began to catch up with the day's breakaway. With 100 kilometers to go, the gap had already shrunk to 1'20", as the peloton suffered its first crash, quickly followed by a second two kilometers later. Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) were among the unfortunate staying behind after this second crash, and as the gap to the leading group continued to diminish, it completely disintegrated before the last 5 survivors were caught by the first peloton. Initially, the second peloton was more than 1'30" back, but as first Tom Pidcock (INEOS Grenadiers), then Mauri Vansevenant (Soudal Quick-Step) and Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious) and finally Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) set off on the counter-attack to make up ground on the first peloton, it was all for naught, as very soon after joining the first peloton, the Van der Poel group also caught up. With 71 kilometers to go... everything could thus start over again since the whole peloton was back together.

Nothing much happened, until the Côte de la Redoute where, with 34.5 km to go, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) went on the attack 500 metres from the summit. Although Richard Carapaz (EF Education-EasyPost) was initially able to keep up with him, the Slovenian rider quickly gained the upper hand and took off alone... all alone for a very long solo, all the way to the Quai des Ardennes in Liège, where he took the race victory.

Behind him, various groups successively went off on the counter, but in the end it was Romain Bardet (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) who broke away, also solo, from a small group with Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost), Benoît Cosnefroy (Decathlon AG2R La Mondiale Team) and Romain Grégoire (Groupama-FDJ) to take 2nd place in this great classic.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2024 rankings

Find the top 10 rankings on the Liège-Bastogne-Liège page of the UCI cycling calendar.

Video race summary

Hereunder you can find the race summary on video:

© photos - A.S.O. / Gaëtan Flamme

door Thomas Vergouwen
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