For years, La Flèche Wallonne was another name for the Alejandro Valverde Puncher’s Revue. In the period 2014-2017 he waited patiently until the steep Mur de Huy flattens out in the last few hundred metres. He jumped, opened up a gap, and celebrated. Easy peasy lemon squeezy, or so it seemed.
In 2018, Julian Alaphilippe picked up the baton in a similar style before he repeated the formula in 2019. In 2020, the Frenchman skipped La Flèche Wallonne and Marc Hirschi took the win, while Primoz Roglic seemed to be on his way to do a Valverde-imitationin April last year. Yet, Alaphilippe decided otherwise on the false home straight and he celebrated at the Wall of Huy for the third time of four years.
Another Slovene, Tadej Pogacar, will be challenging the World Champion around 16:30 CEST, when the Flèche Wallonne to finish.
Favourites 2022 La Flèche Wallonne
**** Julian Alaphilippe, Benoît Cosnefroy, Tadej Pogacar
*** Alejandro Valverde, Dylan Teuns, Jonas Vingegaard
** Tom Pidcock, Remco Evenepoel, Daniel Felipe Martínez
* Michael Woods, Marc Hirschi, Carlos Rodriguez, Victor Lafay