How to watch Liège-Bastogne-Liège 2021

Catch La Doyenne this Sunday

Lily Hansen-Gillis April 22, 2021

Liège-Bastogne-Liège, the oldest of the five monuments, is set to go down this Sunday. The Liège-Bastogne-Liège men’s and women’s races will be streaming on April 25, with the women’s race stream beginning at 5:20 a.m. (2:20 a.m. PDT) and the men’s race kicking off at 7:25 a.m EDT (4:25 a.m. PDT). For Canadians, both races will be streaming on Flobikes.

Revisiting Liège

In last year’s edition of this race (which was held in October), viewers experienced one of the cringe-iest moments of the year when Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-QuickStep) celebrated too early and allowed Jumbo-Visma’s Primož Roglič to sneak ahead of him on the line and take the win.

For the 2021 edition of the oldest Monument, known as la Doyenne (“The Old Lady”), both Roglič and Alaphilippe are back and one can only imagine that Alaphilippe is hoping to take the win that slipped through his fingers last year. It won’t be an easy one—contenders like Marc Hirschi, Tadej Pogačar, Alejandro Valverde and Philippe Gilbert will all be putting in their best efforts. Canada’s Michael Woods, who finished fourth in Wednesday’s Flèche Wallonne (a result he called “disappointing”) is likely to be a strong contender in Sunday’s race.

The men’s race will feature 11 categorized climbs across 259.5km, though the vast majority of the climbs are situated in the latter half of the race.

A race of winners

This year marks the fifth year that Liège-Bastogne-Liège has included a women’s race. All past winners, Anna van der Breggen (2017/2018), Annemiek van Vleuten (2019) and Lizzie Deignan (2020), will race the course, which includes seven categorized climbs over 141 km. This year will be two-time Liège-Bastogne-Liège winner van der Breggen’s last Liège-Bastogne-Liège before retirement. The cyclist just took her seventh consecutive Flèche Wallonne win on Wednesday.

Aside from past winners, other competitors to look out for are Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (SD Worx) , Chantal van den Broek-Blaak (SD Worx), Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and Elisa Longo Borghini (Trek-Segafredo). Canadians can keep they eyes out for Leah Kirchmann racing for Team DSM and Rally’s Sara Poidevin.