Video: The story of Liège-Bastogne-Liège
Every April, the best riders in the world look at a route and know exactly what it will ask of them. Then they go anyway.
Liège-Bastogne-Liège has been held since 1892. It runs for around 260 kilometres through the Ardennes, heading south from Liège to Bastogne before turning around and coming back the same way.
Along the route, the race climbs a series of short, steep hills that come one after another, often in the final hours, when the legs are already empty and there is nowhere left to hide. The winner does not get a cobblestone or a monument carved in stone. What they get is something less visible but more absolute. Confirmation.
And it is, without question, the race that most consistently crowns the strongest rider in the world. This is the full story. Where Liège-Bastogne-Liège came from, how a simple road through the Ardennes became cycling’s oldest monument, the climbs that define it, the riders who shaped its history, and why a race with no single defining feature has become the sport’s most honest test of greatness.
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