The resistance of Liège-Bastogne-Liège | The paper

The return is now something that cycling has forgotten. We leave, we arrive, but we never return. She only stayed at Liège-Bastogne-Liège to return, to build a bridge between the contemporary and the ancient, when the return was still a possibility, even if never the privileged choice. Usually we left from one place, a city, arriving in another, in another. Cycling has always been about communication, a relationship between two elsewhere. However, every now and then it happened that departure and arrival coincided. They were usually called Grand Prix or Trophies, they were held in more or less long circuits. And these remained. It is the returns that have disappeared, linked to a pioneering dimension of this sport: the first London-York-London dates back to 1888 and was just over 800 kilometers long; the first Paris-Brest-Paris, 1,200 kilometres, dates back to 1891 such as the Toulouse-Luchon-Toulouse, about 500 kilometres, the first cycling race that climbed the Pyrenees (it reached the summit of the Col du Portillon: eight and a half kilometers with an average gradient of 7.5 percent and the summit at 1,293 meters ); the Geneva-Lyss-Berne-Geneva, 650 kilometres, dates back to 1892; the Namur-Givet-Namur, 350 kilometres, of 1893; the Rome-Naples-Rome, 460 kilometres, dates back to 1902 (in 1908 it became a stage race, two). They have all disappeared (these and the others: about fifty races were expected to return), with the exception of Paris-Brest-Paris which has become the undisputed queen of endurance and is raced every four years.

The Liège-Bastogne-Liege has been run (with some interruptions; between 1895 and 1907, in 1910 and then during wartime) since 1892. Only the Milan-Turin, among the races that have come down to us, is older.

Certainly it has changed a lot (this year too it will not be the same as last year: the côte des Forges has been reintroduced and the côte de Cornémont will make its debut), for a long time it didn’t even arrive in Liège anymore, but in Ans, which is common to itself despite the fact that it is now an urban whole with the third largest Belgian city by number of inhabitants (after Brussels and Antwerp). It has evolved, it has adapted to changing times, but it has done it in an excellent way, without distorting what it was: an exploration of Wallonia, a caress to that infinity of hills and mounds that are lost seamlessly between Luxembourg, France and Germany.

Everything has changed with the exception of that return, of that halfway point in Bastogne, which has always been quite direct, before the zigzagging wander in search of côtes, good little rises to create selection, separate the resistant from the less resistant, light souls and as a climb with heavy souls, select from the many the few able to put their name in a very long roll of honor, now in its one hundred and ninth edition. And it doesn’t matter, to tell the truth nothing, if there are races with more boxes (Milan-San Remo has reached 114 racing editions, the Giro di Lombardia to 116, like the Paris-Tours, the Paris-Roubaix to 120), Liège-Bastogne-Liège will always and in any case remain the Doyenne, the Decana, because the launch date of a race still has a meaning in cycling. And 131 years is quite a long time span.

And to think that at the time, in 1892, the first winner, Leon Houa (from Liège), said that the race had been hard enough, but a little too short, therefore a not too useful test to understand if it was possible for him to race to win the Bordeaux-Paris, “the greatest race that can be run in bike”. At the time it was actually the richest race, one of the few that arrived in Paris instead of leaving. However, the history of cycling evolved differently, the Bordeaux-Paris hasn’t been raced since 1988, Léon Houa took part in it in 1895, after having won the first three editions of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège, he retired after less than a hundred kilometres, left the cycling and started racing with racing cars. And if he is remembered one hundred and twenty-one years later, it is certainly not for having been a pilot, but for having won the Doyenne.

If Tadej Pogacar will be remembered in one hundred and twenty-one years, it will certainly not be only for the Liège-Bastogne-Liège which he won in 2021, although, chronologically, it was the first Monument Classic won by the Slovenian champion. Perhaps he won’t even be remembered for a Liège-Bastogne-Liège in particular (the possibility of him winning another one between now and the end of his career is quite high), but if he manages to overtake everyone on Sunday he would benefit a lot: only Davide Rebellin and Philippe Gilbert Amstel Gold Race, Freccia Vallone and Liège won in one year, no one even added the Tour of Flanders. Of course, Pogacar is missing Bordeaux-Paris in the roll of honor, but you never know that someone might reorganize it.