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Many can win Fleche, so who will it be? VeloNews' Fred Dreier reports from Belgium.
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Statistics can’t quite illustrate the challenge posed by the Mur de Huy, the final climb of La Fleche Wallonne. Sure, the climb’s average gradient is 9.3 percent. The road soars up 420 feet over the course of three-quarters of a mile. One particularly nasty ramp hits 25 percent. And the climb comes at the tail end of a five-hour race.
But numbers can’t tell you, for example, that a physically fit person can’t walk up the Mur — let alone race a bicycle up it — without breaking a sweat or gulping a few deep breaths. And stats fail to describe just how the painful uphill affects the dynamic of Fleche, the mid-week event sandwiched between the Amstel Gold and Liege-Bastogne-Liege classics.
The Mur condenses the 220km bicycle race into a single kilometer. The same rules of bicycle racing apply — pacing, drafting and teamwork. But the dramatics that take place over the course of a full day of racing are boiled down into just a few minutes.
Last year’s race was a perfect example. All of the favorites surged at the base of the climb, catching and dropping breakaway Fabian Wegmann in the opening meters. Then a super-strong Cadel Evans went for broke, and attacked on the first steep ramp and gapped his rivals. But the Mur proved itself a hill too long for Evans and his early sprint. As the Aussie crumbled in the waning meters, a resilient Kim Kirchen sprung around two-winner Davide Rebellin, Italian Damiano Cunego and finally Evans for the victory.
So who will be the man of the Mur in ’09?
It’s a safe bet that Kirchen won’t be the one to beat. The Luxembourger will suit up for Wednesday, however the Columbia-Highroad rider lost much of his early-season steam from a broken clavicle suffered during February’s Amgen Tour of California. Kirchen was a no-show for last Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race, and it’s a safe bet that he is building his form for July.
Another favorite who won’t make the start is Frank Schleck (Saxo Bank), as the Luxembourger is still tending to injuries suffered in a nasty pileup at the midpoint of Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race. Matthew Lloyd (Silence-Lotto) was also involved in that crash, and won’t start.
Past winners Rebellin (’04, ’07), Alejandro Valverde (’06) will make the start, but Danilo DiLuca (’05) won’t be in attendance, as his LPR Brakes squad was not invited. That has the door open for the usual fast finishers Cunego (Lampre), Wegmann (Milram), Andy Schleck (Saxo Bank) and Olympic champ Samuel Sanchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi).
If last Sunday’s Amstel Gold was indeed an accurate show of the peloton’s strongest legs, then winner Sergei Ivanov and his Katushya teammate Christain Pfannberger are also near the top of favorites. Roman Kreutziger (Liquigas) and Spaniard Oscar Freire also showed glimpses of top form at Amstel, as did runner-up Karsten Kroon (Saxo Bank), who nearly took down Ivanov in the two-up sprint to the line.
La Fleche-Wallonne kicks off mid morning from the city of Charleroi, 70km west of Huy on the Meuse river. The riders climb the Mur de Huy twice before heading out on the main loop, which climbs its way out of the Meuse valley and onto a windswept, rolling plateau, before plunging back to the river for three successive ascents from the valley.
Riders speed into downtown Huy, hang a sharp right turn and then vault onto the lower sections of the Mur. And once they pass onto the climb’s steep, narrow ramp, anything is possible.
