2024 AlUla Tour winner Simon Yates returns to racing at the fourth Monument of the season Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday, alongside in-form Australian Michael Matthews ready to tackle ‘La Doyenne’.
With the brutally undulating terrain, twists, and turns along the 254.5km route, culminating with an iconic series of climbs including the Côte de la Redoute and Côte de la Roche-aux-Faucons, it’s a race with all the right ingredients for the duo.
Alongside Yates and Matthews will be young Italian neo-pro David de Pretto, who is enjoying a consistent and strong start to his professional career having notched up multiple top-5 placings in almost all the races he has started, including recently at his first WorldTour stage race, Itzulia Basque Country.
The 21-year-old will have a lot of experience beside him in the Team Jayco AlUla line-up with the likes of Swiss talent Mauro Schmid and former Italian champion Filippo Zana. Rounding out the balanced seven-rider squad will be Danish neo-pro Anders Foldager and Dutch domestique Jan Maas, with the squad aiming high to deliver a podium result in the gruelling one-day race.
Team Jayco AlUla line-up:
Michael Matthews
David de Pretto
Anders Foldager
Jan Maas
Mauro Schmid
Simon Yates
Filippo Zana
Simon Yates
“Liege is always a great race to be on the start line at, it’s an iconic race and I have only raced in two times in my career. The weather has turned quite wet and cold as we saw in Fleche Wallonne, so that can affect the race quite a lot. I’m looking forward to getting back into racing, it is a long and hard race, and we know it is going to be tough. The team we have is good, these guys have been racing a lot recently. We are motivated and so we will see what we can do on Sunday.”
Valerio Piva – Sport Director
“Liege is of course always a hard race, that is why it is one of the classic cycling Monuments. It is good for us to have Simon Yates coming in, he has a lot of experience and if he has good legs on the day we know it’s a race he could do well in. We also know that Matthews has been in good form the last weeks and is a strong option for us on Sunday. For the other riders like young De Pretto, has been racing very well all season, he’s very young and motivated and will learn a lot in the race with the other guys we have in the team.
The course is similar to previous years, those final climbs are decisive and as we saw with Fleche Wallonne on Wednesday, the weather can really affect the race, so we will see on Sunday how epic it will be.”
climbs are decisive and as we saw with Fleche Wallonne on Wednesday, the weather can really affect the race, so we will see on Sunday how epic it will be.”
Photo: Sprint Cycling
