Excellent Evenepoel solos to second successive Liege-Bastogne-Liege victory

Remco Evenepoel has regained his Liege-Bastogne-Liege title with a supremely impressive solo victory that left all other riders reeling in his wake and sending a message to his Giro d'Italia rivals.

The fourth monument of the season. The final Ardennes classic and the final spring classic of the year, Liege-Bastogne-Liege is a chance for riders to rectify a disappointing spring or a culmination of a successful one. Trying their luck off the front of the race in a breakaway was an eleven-man group containing the likes of Fredrik Dversnes (Uno-X Pro Cycling Team) and Georg Zimmermann (Intermarché - Circus - Wanty).

Before the tv cameras even began rolling, the race was rocked by the massively disappointing news that both Mikkel Honore and Tadej Pogacar had been involved in a crash with both riders forced to abandon and travelling to hospital.

With just under 100kms to go another big names day was at a premature end as Groupama-FDJ leader David Gaudu dropped out of the back of the peloton.

Jan Tratnik made the first move of the big riders with around 85kms to go and was soon joined by Magnus Sheffield as the duo began to pick their way through the breakaway riders.

As the race reached the Côte de Stockeu, Tratnik began to drop Sheffield as Soudal - Quick-Step and Julian Alaphilippe really began putting the pressure on at the front of a peloton that was ever decreasing in numbers much to the delight of Remco Evenepoel.

With 65kms to go the supremely impressive Tratnik successfully bridged the gap to the race leaders, 1:08 ahead of the peloton and with the Slovenian immediately taking to the front of the breakaway only Astana's Simone Velasco was able to follow.

With Soudal-Quick-Step under pressure to save their spring continued burning through almost their whole team without really getting rid of any of the pre-race contenders from the peloton, Tratnik and Velasco remained 50 seconds ahead with 40kms to go.

As the peloton began positioning themselves before climbing the Cote de la Redoute, that time gap began disappearing.

Soudal - Quick-Step's Ilan van Wilder doing a monster turn on the front of the peloton, Tratnik and Velasco were soon swept up and then Remco Evenepoel made his move, getting out of the saddle for the first time powering away from all except Tom Pidcock.

With Pidcock refusing to help Evenepoel, content to sit on the wheel and not do any turns, the current world champion decided to up the pace again, dropping the INEOS Grenadiers rider and going solo.

From there, there was simply no stopping the Belgian. Riding a solo time-trial to the line, Evenepoel had stretched his lead to over a minute by the time he reached the final categorised climb of the day.

Behind Evenepoel the battle for the podium was heating up as one of the breakout stars of this Classics season, Ben Healy went on the attack once again, being followed by Pidcock and Santiago Buitrago.

So far ahead was Evenepoel, the Soudal - Quick-Step man was able to cruise into Liege, celebrating with still kilometres to go. The first man this century to claim back-to-back Liege-Bastogne-Liege wins Evenepoel's win saves what has been a disappointing spring for his team.

In the battle for best of the rest it was Pidcock in second and Buitago in third with Healy fourth.

Results powered by FirstCycling.com