Closing the Ardennes Classics week, Liège-Bastogne-Liège is the third and final race following the Amstel Gold Race and La Flèche Wallonne Femmes. It also marks the end of the spring Classics season before the stage races commence, starting with the Vuelta a España Femenina in two weeks.
Both the Ardennes races so far have been won by SD Worx’s Demi Vollering, a rider (and team) we’ve seen dominate throughout this year’s Classics season. But Liège-Bastogne-Liège is no walk in the park, and over the 140km route, the women’s peloton will face many tough climbs – making it a favourable race for the climbers and puncheurs of the bunch.
The defending champion Annemiek van Vleuten will be back this year, but so will two other previous winners, including Vollering and Lizzie Deignan (Trek-Segafredo), who has just returned to racing after maternity leave. However, Van Vleuten hasn’t had the best opening to the 2023 season, not yet securing a win, so it’s questionable whether she’ll have the legs to defend her title against the hot competition.
The 2022 edition was won by Van Vleuten with a solo attack on the Côte de la Roche aux Faucons. Will we see the same this year by the Movistar rider, or will her Dutch rival have other plans? We look at the contenders who we think could finish off their Classics season with a bang.
Demi Vollering
Vollering has been on fire this Classics season, taking four first-place finishes in her last six races. She has only once not achieved a podium place this season, at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, but her team still won with Lotte Kopecky. Familiar on the podium at this race too, Vollering won Liège-Bastogne-Liège in 2021 and came third place in 2019, 2020, and 2022 – only once has she slipped outside of the top 10 for this race and that was in 2018 when she came 11th.
Demi Vollering has dominated the Ardennes Classics so far and will be looking to take a clean sweep on Sunday (Image by SWPix.com)
The Dutch rider’s form has never looked better and at Flèche Wallonne she looked cool, calm and collected as she made it up the brutal Mur de Huy, effortlessly pulling away from her competitors.
Vollering won this Monument in a sprint finish in 2021, but we’ve seen her and SD Worx dominate with solo victories this spring, so expect to see them make some moves on La Redoute or the Roche-aux-Faucons.
Liane Lippert
The German rider is proving that her move to Movistar this year was…