Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) may have won a fourth Liège-Bastogne-Liège solo by 45 seconds, but that doesn’t quite show the entire picture of just how close 19-year-old Paul Seixas (Decathlon CMA CGM) pushed him to his absolute limit.
The World Champion even conceded post-race that he had already been thinking of how to play the two-up sprint after failing to get rid of Seixas on La Redoute, where everyone else crumbled under the pressure of his initial stinging attack.
Pogačar went so hard trying to drop Seixas on La Redoute that the pair actually broke the record time on the iconic Ardennes climb, beating the Slovenian’s previous best time of 3:58 by 13 seconds with a 3:45 ascent.
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“On La Redoute I was really going deep, and I could see that he’s a little bit on the elastic, but over the top he came next to me, and I was like ‘OK, really impressed’,” said Pogačar after the finish.
When they arrived at the Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons as the leading duo, though, Pogačar made a last bid to distance the young super talent, and he finally cracked him with 13.9km to go and 500 metres of the climb remaining in what became the winning move.
Pogačar also showed a rare insight into the pressure he feels coming into the events on his limited calendar, with Liège being just his fifth race appearance in 2026. From those five days, he has won four, three of them at…
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