Info with one day to go

April 26 ^th 2025 - 18:21

Key points:

• The ninth edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes will feature three former winners on Sunday: Demi Vollering, Elizabeth Deignan and Anna van der Breggen, who has regained her fitness after missing the La Flèche Wallonne Femmes.
• After her victory on Wednesday at the top of the Mur de Huy, ahead of Demi Vollering, who is once again competing with a formidable FDJ-Suez team, rookie Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) is among the favorites, especially as she already triumphed in the Ardent City last summer... in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
• Second in the last two editions, having been beaten in the sprint, Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) hopes to find the key to finally winning this monument that the Italian champion cherishes so much. Kasia Niewiadoma, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and world champion Lotte Kopecky are among the many headliners to be followed live on Eurosport 2 from 4:55 p.m.

A fearsome challenge for the peloton

The route for the ninth edition of the Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes is identical to the 2024 edition, matching the distance record set last year with a 152.9-km course through the Ardennes. "Nothing has changed, except that this time we're re-entering the men's course at km 48, in Vielsalm," explains race director Gilles Maignan. Both courses will therefore follow the same final 104 km, a shared finale that includes nine of the ten climbs - only the Côte de Saint-Roch is an exception, featuring at km 15.8. "The sequence of climbs will be tough, including the mythical trilogy of Wanne-Stockeu-Haute-Levée. It will weigh heavy on the legs ahead of the finale which features La Redoute, Les Forges and La Roche-aux-Faucons again. The selection will be made naturally. The weather will also be decisive because hot and sunny conditions are forecast Sunday. This will perhaps impact things differently because the weather was not good on Wednesday at La Flèche Wallonne Femmes. We don't really know how the tactics will be developed. We saw FDJ-Suez riding all day to try to control La Flèche but without being rewarded at the end. Will they adopt a different tactic? We might wonder, ‘will they try to rely on other teams by saying that it is not up to them to take control of the race’?"

Huge firepower for FDJ-Suez and Vollering

Once again FDJ-Suez arrive at Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes with impressive firepower in their ranks. Last year the French team took the victory in Liège courtesy of Grace Brown - who retired at the end of 2024 - and now they line-up with Demi Vollering, the winner of this race with her former team SD Worx in 2021 and 2023. Victorious at Strade Bianche Donne in March, Vollering is hungry for another triumph in Liège having missed out on the win at La Flèche Wallonne Femmes on Wednesday to her compatriot Puck Pieterse by just 2”. Vollering was brilliantly positioned by her team throughout the race and in particular on the final Mur de Huy climb by her French teammate Juliette Labous, only for Pieterse to overpower her in the final 150m. In addition to Vollering and Labous, the team includes the strong climber Évita Muzic (preparing for her eighth appearance in the race having finished in the top 20 the last two years) and Elise Chabbey, who was fifth in 2023 and fourth last year in Liège, when riding for Canyon//SRAM. Will they all be focused on a Vollering victory? "No, Liège has shown that you can't just use one card, it’s a very open race,” says Stephen Delcourt, FDJ-Suez's manager. “We won with Grace Brown by taking the first breakaway. The scenario in the women's race, the year (Elizabeth) Deignan won, was that the breakaway was never seen again. So we can't just play with one card. Liège is a very tough race, but it can be very tactical. Between La Redoute and La Roche-aux-Faucons, there are many kilometres, and between the top of La Roche-aux-Faucons and the finish, there are even more kilometres (13.3km), so anything is possible.” Last year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift already produced a thrilling battle between Vollering and another strong contender in Liège, Puck Pieterse, but the former looks beyond her countrywoman: “She is doing really good this year and she won in Liège last year, so of course she’ll be a rider to watch. It makes for a rivalry, but it doesn’t matter against who I win, I always want to win!”

Pieterse also enjoying rivalry with Vollering

Ahead of the ninth edition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, Fenix-Deceuninck’s Puck Pieterse is in red hot form and is returning to the scene of her superb Stage 4 victory at the 2024 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. On that occasion Pieterse registered her breakthrough win by beating fellow Dutchwoman Demi Vollering to the line in a photo finish and on Wednesday she beat Vollering again, outpacing her for a debut victory at La Flèche. In her ten races to date this year Pieterse has not finished outside the top ten, with her third place at the Amstel Gold Race last Sunday preceding her success at the top of the Mur de Huy. That win means she comes into her first Liège-Bastogne-Liège as, “Not the main favorite, but one of the favorites for sure,” in her own words. “For this race, I think it's a bit different than La Flèche, where most know it happens on the Mur and you need to wait for it. Tomorrow a lot can happen, so we need to just have a clear vision all day and keep focused on the moves that happen. Lots of times breaks happen here, so just be attentive to that and then we choose a good spot to attack.” Pieterse has a refreshingly honest and positive view of her rapidly developing rivalry with her illustrious compatriot Vollering. “It’s cool! It's gone really quick actually, and it's just super cool to have battles with the kind of riders you normally just saw on TV and now you find yourself in it. I try to enjoy it as much as possible. Inside the race you shouldn't give each other presents, but outside of racing I don't see why you cannot be friendly also.”

Elisa Longo Borghini: “Already impatient to be racing”

Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) is set to become one of only three women to ride in all nine editions of Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, alongside Kasia Niewiadoma and Ashleigh Moolman Pasio. Longo Borghini has stood on the podium three times (third in 2021, second in 2023 and second in 2024) and comes to the race in excellent form. Already victorious this year at the UAE Tour Women, Dwars door Vlaanderen and most recently Brabantse Pijl, Longo Borghini was third at La Flèche and must be considered a strong contender for the win at La Doyenne on Sunday. “I’m already impatient to be racing on Sunday as it’s a race that I love. It's also a race that suits my characteristics so I'm really looking forward to racing tomorrow,” she enthuses. Asked to explain further why the race suits her so well, the 33 year-old Italian replies, “I think it's just a combination of these hard climbs, one after each other, and it makes it a demanding race.” With regard to the strategy she and her team might employ to shape the race in her favour and avoid a bunch finish on the Quai des Ardennes, Longo Borghini plays it cool. “We have a strong team and we will try to do our best, play our own tactics and we’ll see how the outcome will be,” she concludes.

Van der Breggen returns to action

For Anna van der Breggen (Team SD Worx – Protime) she returns to a race which she won in 2017 and 2018 before the break in her racing career. Back in the peloton this year, she missed La Flèche Wallonne Femmes midweek due to an illness and states that she is fit to race, even if that is perhaps to support her colleagues, such as world champion Lotte Kopecky and Amstel Gold Race Ladies winner Mischa Bredewold, in their quests for the win. “I feel good enough to race again, so let's say I'm happy with that. It was not the best week for me, which really was a pity because I felt good before that. That's not what you want in a week like this.” On the prospects of victory from within the team she asserts: “We have Lotte (Kopecky), she was already focusing on this race for a long time and she is in good shape. I think our biggest chance is with Lotte. Like we saw in Amstel sometimes it ends up different and we have a team that can swap pretty well. We have Misha (Bredewold) again and same with the other girls we have here. I know my sprint is not the best, so probably I’m going to help the team as much as possible.” Kopecky, for her part, says the victory is the aim, even if the competition is fierce. “I made a pretty big goal of it, so it would be it would be stupid to make it a goal if I knew it wasn't possible. But I think it's a really tough race and I just hope for really good legs tomorrow. I think for sure (Elisa) Longo Borghini showed very good form last week, the same for Demi Vollering, Puck Pieterse was really strong on the Muy de Huy. I think that these are the three main contenders, but there's also Ferrand-Prevot. We shouldn't underestimate her.”  

Ferrand-Prevot wants to "learn lessons" ahead of the Tour

Two weeks after her solo triumph at Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift, on her debut in that race, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot finds herself at the start of another Monument, Liège-Bastogne-Liège Femmes, the first two editions of which she competed in: 2017 (DNF) and 2018 (seventh). “That was a while ago,” smiles the 33-year-old Frenchwoman, reassured in recent days about the condition of her ankle, which had become infected following her crash at Strade Bianche early in March. She gives some context to her position at this stage of the season, with the big objectives of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift ahead in July. “I still participated in the Tour of Flanders and Roubaix whilst (Demi) Vollering and other women who will be competing for the overall standings in the Tour did not. So I don't want to say that Liège is a test. I just want to gain experience from this race and learn lessons for my future goals. Honestly, I think it's going to be hard to get a victory in this type of race. I'm also a bit heavier at the moment [4kg more than when she won the Olympic mountain bike gold medal last summer]. I know that I can't already be at my ideal weight because otherwise I won't be able to maintain it until the end of July! The ultimate goal is the end of July. But yes, of course, I've trained, I have races behind me. So I know that I'll be able to do something good on Sunday. But to do something extraordinary, I'm not sure!" Ferrand-Prevot, who has not raced since her 36th place in the Amstel Gold Race Ladies, will be accompanied by three young climbers who finished in the top 20 of La Flèche Wallonnes Femmes: Mijntje Geurts (10th), Marion Bunel (18th) and Maud Oudeman (20th).