Belgian knows the parcours well although he has never ridden the race
Despite never having competed in Liège-Bastogne-Liège, BMC Racing’s classics captain Greg Van Avermaet knows the parcours very well. The Belgian has shown good form in some of the hillier races so far this season, and came close to victory with a lone attack in the closing stages of Milano-Sanremo; for this reason the team will be putting its support behind him in Sunday’s race.
“I know the parcours very well, but this is the first time that I’ll do this race,” Van Avermaet said. “I don’t know what to expect, but I think it suits me better than Flèche Wallonne. It’s been a long classics season for me, but I will put in all my best to get a good result for the team.”
Van Avermaet finished 16th in Wednesday’s Flèche, 20 seconds behind race winner Philippe Gilbert. The final steep climb of the Mur de Huy to the finish of the race was his undoing, and the making of Gilbert, as the rest of the peloton struggled in his wake. With the hills coming before the finish though, and the drag to the finish line in Liège much less steep than that in Huy, Van Avermat feels he has a better chance.
Behind him in the team car Van Avermaet will have one of the few Belgians to have won an Ardennes Classic in recent years, with victory in the 2001 edition of la Flèche Wallonne. Verbrugghe feels that the rave will really begin with 100km to go, which is where the zone containing nine of the race’s ten climbs begins.
“There we need to open the race,” said Verbrugghe. “We’re going to try and make the first break and then we’ll have more cards to play in the final with guys like Mathias Frank, Ivan Santaromita and Mauro Santambrogio.”
BMC Racing Team for Liège-Bastogne-Liège:
Mathias Frank, Martin Kohler, Jeff Louder, Amaël Moinard, Mauro Santambrogio, Ivan Santaromita, Greg Van Avermaet and Simon Zahner.