Tadej Pogacar's matches Dylan Teuns' climbing time at Mur de Huy, Valverde and Alaphilippe maintain climbing record

Tadej Pogacar won yesterday's Flèche Wallonne with great authority, thus remaining a stone's throw away from winning the Ardennes triptych if he manages to win this Sunday's Liège-Bastogne-Liège. The Slovenian, who was riding the race for the fourth time, was finally the fastest on the Mur de Huy, where he had no rivals.

He was the fastest yesterday, but he is not the fastest ever to tackle the very tough 1.3 km climb. Analyzing the data of the last 30 years of how the different winners have tackled the final kilometer of the climb, we see that there are several who did better than the Slovenian, among them Alejandro Valverde and Julian Alaphilippe who maintain the record, having climbed it 5 seconds faster than Pogacar yesterday.

The first to go under 3 minutes was Davide Rebellin, who clocked 2:47 in 2004. This year Pogacar has ridden it a second better, stopping the clock at 2:46, like Dylan Teuns last year and like Rebellin himself in 2009 and Cadel Evans in 2010.

Below that 2:46 we have four men: again Rebellin, who finished with 2:45 in 2007, Philippe Gilbert, who stopped the clock in 2:44 in 2011 and the shared record of the Mur de Huy climb for the 2 strongest riders of the race: Alejandro Valverde in 2014 and Julian Alaphilippe in 2021, who stopped the clock in 2:41.