Pint of tonic: a refreshing drink of a week in cycling

Why 50% of the Ardennes Classics have hydrated my cycling soul

It’s been an interesting Classics season. Dramatic at times. Predictable at others. Prior to the beginning of the Ardennes, I’d have rated it maybe 3 out of 5 for memorability, all things considered.

So far though, the Ardennes have delivered. From a personal perspective, two of the four races so far have stood above the rest – for completely different reasons. Both have been refreshing and necessary for my cycling-based sanity, and I will expound upon said satisfactory outcomes forthwith, beginning with the most recent race to have concluded in the Ardennes: La Flèche Wallonne Femmes.

La Flèche Wallonne has its naysayers. But it doesn’t pretend to be anything that it’s not. It has the same predictable unpredictability as Milano-Sanremo in a way, though in miniature – the final decision inevitably being made on the 1.3km Mur de Huy, rather than from the Poggio, just over 5km distant from the finish line (or sometimes, maybe, the Cipressa). In any case, like La Primavera, with its long, slow build to an explosive crescendo, Flèche is a race where you know what’s going to happen: someone will have more grit, more willpower and more sheer leg strength on the day to get themselves up the wall in front. The end. It doesn’t stop it being great to watch, albeit it’s probably not always worth setting aside your whole afternoon for it. But the final climb is always a spectacle. Somehow heart-stopping, despite how comically slow it appears, from a visual sense. It’s an honest race though, isn’t it? May the man and woman with the best legs on the day win. A true test of climbing power and form. Little that can be done, tactically, aside from positioning – even that is not enough, oftentimes.

Case in point, FDJ SUEZ. Coming into the Poggio they looked much as UAE Team Emirates had a couple of hours earlier: one extremely strong climbing domestique leading the race favourite – two incredible individuals ahead of the rest of the pack. I’m not going to delve into the finer points of the climb because it’s quicker for you to just go back and watch it, but as always, it was a push and pull of gradient versus legs versus stamina. As one or the other of these factors proved too much for each individual, they begin to drop away leaving only two: Demi Vollering, and Puck Pieterse.

Demi has won here before, and knows how it’s done. She’s been beaten here before too, and though her seated climbing power is something to behold, there was a rugged beauty in the all out battle between bike and human waged by Pieterse as she dragged herself up the Mur. A consummate bike handler off-road, Pieterse looked as though her Canyon had wronged her somehow as she wrestled it up the fearsome gradient, her shoulders rolling, more ungainly than the smooth, economic style of Vollering yet somehow more fitted to the climb itself, with its own brand of dizzying savagery.

Puck Pieterse’s victory at this year’s edition was just so bloody satisfying. So close so many times, and suffering from her tactical inexperience on numerous occasions, Pieterse has shown her brilliance this spring by finishing in the top ten of every race she’s started. Her podium at Amstel Gold Race – and subsequent beer chugging superiority – was so well deserved for a rider who puts herself out there time and time again, when she should sometimes play her cards closer to her chest. At Flèche, she was more reserved during the day, using her team and listening to advice from the team car, and when it came to the crunch, she had enough left in the tank to deliver an unbeatable ascent on the Mur. I bloody love the woman and I am overjoyed for her and can’t wait to see what she does next.

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Pieterse’s victory followed on from Sunday’s Amstel Gold Race, which was in itself a tonic. The women’s race was very good, and was echoed by the men’s in a sense, with its surprise victor, but the men’s race was IMPORTANT. I needed that race. That outcome. Exactly the way it transpired, right down to the traditional nervous moments awaiting the photo finish - because if any race can keep us guessing to the dying moments, even beyond, to confirm or debate or even change the eventual victor, it's Amstel Gold.

Mathieu van der Poel defied the odds to win there, six years previously. Arguably the most memorable edition of the race prior to this one, and perhaps the one that will linger longer in the memories of some, once recency bias melts away into the passage of time and names on a list no longer leap out at us in the way they once did.

But for me, this is as significant. Though that win for the newly-minted road racer fresh from the cyclocross field and riding his first full spring Classics season was a portent of a possible future; one which has come to fruition so gloriously and supremely that it confirms what everyone knew back then: that MVDP was a star in the making. Eight Monuments later and the fanatics, the off-road fans, the ones that kept an eye on the iconoclastic Dutchman as he rose through the ranks in a pro team, nod sagely. They predicted this meteoric rise. It was inevitable. That day at Amstel was a promise. An opening chapter.

This by contrast, marks a possible paradigm shift in the men’s peloton. Perhaps that feels like an overstatement. But let me explain.

Wherever you stand on the Slovenian master of the current cycling scene - fan, frenemy or foe - you could argue, we needed this. Any armchair fan or lazy media outlet can predict that Tadej Pogačar will win a race. Especially one where van der Poel, his one-day nemesis, is absent. The very fact that he didn't win this race is significant, for a whole range of reasons - from the specific to the symbolic. A shake-up of our expectations is no bad thing. Even his fans must get bored of him winning all the time, right? RIGHT?!

Though the long in the tooth will rail and roll their eyes and claim 'he's already proven he's human', reeling off numerous examples of when things haven't quite gone Pogačar's way, whether or not he triumphed regardless (his crash at Strade Bianche, Paris-Roubaix, his fall at the Giro before he recovered and went on to win the stage, and more besides), he's never proven he's human quite like this before. With no van der Poel, and no Vingegaard; a Remco Evenepoel fresh from his return - victorious a few days prior but surely not already back to his very top level. With a solo lead, steadily growing. The way Pog likes to win. No crashes. No random cramp issues or fuelling errors. A place from which we've seen him win so many times before. From the front. The rest languishing in his dust, until that dust is being lifted from the dry road surface so far in the distance, they're now just languishing. Left to fight for scraps. Turning to look at one another instead of organising a viable chase, content with second places, because, in this era of superheroes, second is first.

Not that day.

Mattias Skjelmose's willpower, his tiny flicker of hope, and his willingness to just give it a shot, combined with Remco's metronomic pace, his ebullient determination. First the gap steadied, then it began to fall. Slowly. So, so slowly. It was oh, so, tantalisingly close for what felt like an eternity. Like a cat toying with a mouse perhaps - would Pogačar have been playing dead all along, only to let them come within touching distance, then kick once more?

Not this time.

The gap closed. Of course, I thought – didn’t we all think? – Pogačar would still find a way to win. His speed at the finish. His desire for glory. Or if not, then Remco. On a confidence high. Like a dog with a bone. Resolute. Unwavering.

But not the third man (it's never the third man, as fans of political murder mystery ‘The Residence’ can testify). At any moment he looked as though he could have gone pop. Skjelmose himself admitted he didn't have the legs to pull a turn, for much of the time that he and Remco were in pursuit.

There's no doubt that from an individual perspective, Mattias Skjelmose needed that; from his disbelieving breathless whisper to his team staff 'I think I won?' to his heartfelt tribute to his recently sadly departed grandfather, there was no hiding what it meant to him – he didn’t care to disavow interviewers of their surprise, of their open underestimation of him. We all underestimated him.

He needed it. They all needed it: the peloton. Their hope, perhaps reignited. That Pogačar is beatable. That he is human. Not often. Maybe not again this season - we have seen him before beaten, rising up to right that wrong with immediate and devastating effect. He did so yesterday at La Flèche Wallonne and he may do so again at Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday. But still. There is HOPE.

It could and arguably should enliven the races ahead, particularly those in the near future, after his rivals have seen him falter. The paradigm shift I suggested could occur - one in which the rest of the peloton dare to dream that they can beat him, and go all in to chase, because if not him, then who? If not him, then any one of them could try their luck, shoot their shot. Like Skjelmose, they might just find themselves doing the unthinkable.

Of course, it could come to nought. Pogačar may well win every other race he rides this year by minutes and then once again, those naysayers will shake their heads knowingly and put his mis-step at Amstel down to fatigue from Paris-Roubaix. And maybe that's what it was. Probably, it was. But if so, so what? As a result of that choice he made, a dice rolled, we were afforded a different outcome than the usual long range solo victory by minutes. It gives us hope for different outcomes in the future; that he might take on too much again and crack open that door to let in the light – that it may shine on some other unexpected hopeful, on another day.

And for those who love him or are curious about his incredible aptitude, it offers an opportunity, to learn more about the limits of the man’s own brilliance – limits that feel instinctively as though they need to be reached, to assuage some of the suspicion and negativity surrounding his current, almost unbelievable, streak of history-making.

And it was needed for many of us as fans – not simply for the joy at the underdog victory, as much as we crave these moments in all sport, but for the notion of suspense, over and above mere spectacle; of being able to enjoy a race objectively, as a neutral. Because though I admire and even like Skjelmose, he's not one of the riders I'm actively pulling for. For me, it's strangely MORE important that it happened this way. If it had been one of the guys I was cheering for that someone did the unthinkable, I'd have felt such euphoria, it would have obscured the significance of the event itself.

The fact the three went to the line, and that it ended like that – that was really something special. Because it was something different. Watching one of my favourite riders, Puck Pieterse win, gave me that warm rush of joy that you need every so often in a sport that offers so little in the way of victory. On the other hand, the fact that I was able to observe Amstel as a neutral and feel the rush of adrenaline, the disbelief, and the thrill of the final result, was also deeply significant. And satisfyingly refreshing. Better than a pint of pickle juice, anyway.

NEXT UP: Meanwhile in France… tales from the Coupe de France, the underrated cycling series that’s absolutely cooking avec gas