For the second year in a row and third in total, Spaniard Alejandro Valverde triumphed atop the brutal Mur de Huy climb to win Wednesday’s Fleche Wallonne race.
The 34-year-old Movistar team leader placed himself at the front of the peloton on the 1.3km climb up the Mur, which has an average gradient of 9.6 percent with one section at 26 percent, and gradually wound up his sprint finish.
No one could overhaul the winner of five Ardennes Classics titles as Frenchman Julian Alaphilippe took second ahead of Switzerland’s Michael Albasini.
Photo: EPA
Valverde joined four other riders, including Belgian legend Eddy Merckx, in having won the race a record three times.
“It’s a huge joy to have this third victory and equal number of Eddy Merckx,” said Valverde, who turns 35 tomorrow. “It gives me a lot of confidence and serenity for the rest of the season. It shows I’m on the right track and still there, even after 35 years.”
It was the fourth win in a row for a Spanish rider, but 2012 champion Joaquim Rodriguez could manage only fourth, while his Katusha teammate Dani Moreno, the winner in 2013, was fifth.
World champion Michal Kwiatkowski, who won Sunday’s Amstel Gold race, could only manage 33rd at 38 seconds.
It was a prestigious field on the start-line in Waremme as Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali, the man he succeeded, Chris Froome, and last year’s Giro d’Italia winner Nairo Quintana were all present, and perhaps with reconnaissance in mind — the third stage of the Grand Boucle in July will finish on the Mur de Huy.
Seven riders broke clear about 10km into the race and built up a maximum lead of eight minutes, although Movistar and Katusha managed the gap.
Ahead of the first of three ascensions up the brutal Mur de Huy (“wall of Huy”) climb with 85km still to ride, last year’s runner-up Dan Martin went down and was forced to chase back on with two teammates, although he would later throw in the towel.
Likewise, 2011 winner Philippe Gilbert crashed out in an innocuous-looking incident about 50km from home, while several riders later ended up in a ditch by the side of a straight road. And 30km from home one of the favorites, Belgian Jelle Vanendert, second at the Amstel Gold race last year before finishing sixth in Huy, hit the tarmac, ending his race.
Soon after, Luis Leon Sanchez and Giuseppe Visconti attacked off the front of the peloton at the top of the second ascension of the Mur, with the remnants of the breakaway only 40 seconds up the road.
The pair quickly overhauled the breakaway riders and left them behind, although their lead over the peloton, led by Katusha and Kwiatkowski’s Etixx-Quick Step outfit, hovered between 20 and 25 seconds. There was still time for another crash with Froome hitting the deck hard and shredding his shorts, although he got back on his bike — battered and bruised, he rolled in to the finish in 123rd place, more than 12 minutes off the pace.
Nibali, who would finish 20th, launched hostilities on the penultimate climb, the Cote de Cherave, just 5km before the final ascension of the Mur, stretching out the field.
Belgian Tim Wellens then made a brave break for home with only Italian Gianpaolo Caruso able to react, but the latter was hauled back within 3km of the finish, while Wellens hit the Mur with a only handful of seconds advantage.
It was not enough as he was quickly passed with the favorites massing at the front and jostling for the final shoot-out.
In the end, there was no dramatic attack or acceleration as Valverde simply maintained his effort a bit longer than the rest.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier