"Pogacar is so good, I don't know when that will ever stop" - Laurens Ten Dam on World Champion, Evenepoel and Vingegaard

Liège-Bastogne-Liège was hoped to be the climax of the battles between Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel this spring but it was anything but that. After a brilliant Amstel Gold Race, the Olympic Champion simply did not have the legs to compete for the win, whilst the World Champion was above the rest of the competiton for the second consecutive year at La Doyenne.

"In the past, we Dutch people were more into the Ardennes classics, and that has now shifted more towards the cobblestone classics with Van der Poel [...] But if you now see what the Dutch are achieving in the hilly classics: it's just real poverty. Uphill, we simply have a poor generation, except for Arensman," Laurens Ten Dam argued in the Live Slow Ride Fast Podcast. Only four Dutch riders finished the race, none within the first 70.

But what Ten Dam payed the most attention to was the way Pogacar attacked to victory at La Redoute. "Pogacar's team was so strong. What UAE showed was simply phenomenal. At La Redoute, Pogacar even had two teammates ahead of him. And when he went – ​​it wasn't even really a breakaway – he rode everyone out of their wheel without visibly accelerating and even broke the record time".

The Slovenian won his third Liège and ninth ever monument, now equal to a few other riders as the third rider to conquer the most monuments in his career. "It's great that Evenepoel had so much confidence for Liège-Bastogne-Liège. But he simply fell off his pink cloud like a ton of bricks," he believes. 

"Liège-Bastogne-Liège simply doesn't lie, and then you see that the preparation – which was simply not ideal for Evenepoel – means that you can't win a race like that, especially not against Pogacar".

"But I do think it's a shame. You hope it will be a duel, but you soon knew it wasn't going to work out. You never really saw Evenepoel and his team riding in front towards La Redoute. I thought then: he's just not good enough," the Dutch ex-pro argued. "Because no matter how good you are, if you're 200 metres behind Pogacar on La Redoute, you're automatically defeated".

Evenepoel then cracked on the Còte de la Rouche aux Faucons, and rode slowly to avoid the TV motorbike's attention on what was not his best day. "I immediately saw what he wanted: he just didn't want to have the bike with him. And I understand that, it's of course annoying when you're constantly being filmed while you're no longer racing for the win. I thought he handled that quite maturely". 

This Pogacar seems rather unbeatable on a good day, and will likely give Evenepoel (and others) more trouble at the Tour de France. "Pogacar is so good, I don't know when that will ever stop. If you ride in the top three everywhere from Strade to Liège, you are really an asset to the sport. And in the Tour – he will be great again. I think that at Visma | Lease a Bike they are now thinking: how are we going to solve this with Vingegaard?'