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First up, Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) will make a return to Amstel Gold Race after a four-year absence, his only other appearance in his neo-pro season when he didn’t finish the race. With his last outing a tremendous victory at the Tour of Flanders, the pressure is both on and off the transcedent star of cycling, as he's already achieved another milestone result, but it creates more expectation that he will win any race he fronts up at.
“The Spring has already been a big success for us but we’re hungry to come to the Ardennes classics and take home a big result, starting with Amstel," said Pogačar. "It’s a race I’ve only done once but I know it’s a long, hard parcours with lots of climbing so we need to be ready for a tough race.”
With 10 wins to his name already this season (eight stages or one-day races and two general classification wins at Paris-Nice and Ruta del Sol), Pogačar will enter the hilly race in the Limburg region of the Netherlands as the standout favourite with defending champion Michal Kwiatkowski, Tom Pidcock (both INEOS Grenadiers), 2022 runner-up Benoit Cosnefroy (AG2R-Citroen), and a variety of Classics specialists including Neilson Powless (EF Education Easypost) and Valentin Madouas (Groupama-FDJ) set to challenge the two-time Tour de France champion.
Fleche-Wallonne has been a bit of a barren race for Pogačar by his lofty standards, ninth in 2020 his best result on the Mur de Huy finish, which appears tailor-made for the punchy climber’s abilities. The mid-week Belgian classic is somewhat one for the specialists and is renowned for certain riders winning multiple editions and riders that you wouldn’t necessarily expect regularly featuring in the battle for the victory.
Whether or not his collection of silverware has grown in the meantime, Pogačar will finish his Ardennes classic tilt as he locks horns with fellow young phenom, Remco Evenepoel (Soudal QuickStep), at Liège–Bastogne–Liège in a clash of titans between the last two winners.
The world champion could put a smile back on the Soudal Quick-Step team's faces by landing their first monument of the year, perhaps with the help of Julian Alaphilippe, who twice had to settle for second in Liège (2015 and 2021). The Olympic gold medallist, Richard Carapaz (EF Education-Easypost), will join the champions already present in Huy, along with Soren Kragh Andersen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), and Australians Ben O'Connor (AG2R-Citroen) and Jai Hindley (BORA-hansgrohe).
If Pogačar can win Amstel Gold race and Fleche-Wallonne, he will go into Liège–Bastogne–Liège with the chance of completing the Ardennes triple, a rare feat with a lot of prestige attached within the cycling world. Anna van der Breggen was the last rider to achieve the triple back in 2017, with Philippe Gilbert the last men's rider to manage it, back in 2011, with Davide Rebellin (though he subsequently received a doping ban) also winning all three in 2004.
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