TNT Sports
Fair play to Di Luca
By
Published 21/04/2005 at 13:50 GMT+1
Last year Davide Rebellin swept the Ardennes classics. Now Danilo Di Luca is on target. If specialists are killing the suspense of the classics, it doesn't bother Eurosport TV analyst Sean Kelly, himself a two-time winner of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. He told
Eurosport
Image credit: TNT Sports
Last year, Rebellin completed an unprecedented sweep of the Ardennes classics, winning the Amstel Gold, the Fleche Wallonne, and Liège.
Just one year on, fellow Italian Di Luca seems poised to repeat the feat.
Newspapers - like French sports daily L'Equipe - note "that be it Tom Boonen in the Flanders classics or Di Luca in the Ardennaises, cycling is decidedly living in the era of specialisation.
The same is true for other races: Lance Armstrong only targets the Tour de France and in Wednesday's Fleche, Damiano Cunego was definitely thinking first of his preparation for the Giro.
But so what says Kelly.
"It doesn't bother me. It shows they're in really great shape."
He notes how times have changed. In 1984, the year that Kelly won the first of two Liège-Bastogne-Lièges, the Irishman also won Paris-Nice, Paris-Roubaix, and the Criterium International.
"In the early part of my career, you didn't prepare for one race. Bernard Hinault and Laurent Fignon would take part in races [like Paris-Nice] and try to win stages or the event outright.
"But if a rider can prepare like Armstrong or Di Luca, why not do it because the sponsor is happy and the rider even happier with the result."
Kelly knows it can be disappointing for fans that a rider like Lance Armstrong takes part in so few races:
"In Paris-Nice this year, on the number of stages he was there, there were a lot of people who came just to see Armstrong because on the Tour de France, to get a view of the riders with all of the security, it's almost impossible."
PRESSURE ON DI LUCA
But Di Luca's victory on Sunday is not a given.
At 260 kilometres, the Doyenne of the classics is a grueling race.
Kelly notes that Liège differs from the short, steep climbs of the Amstel Gold:
"Liege is long climbs, six kilometres, even more. Being in top shape is very important because it's six-and-a-half hours long."
And naturally, Di Luca's the man to beat.
"In the final if there's six or eight riders, a lot will be looking at him. There will be a lot of weight on his shoulders through the media, so he'll have to stay up there to control the race.
"That's normal when you're the big favourite, but it [also] depends how the race develops."
More to the favour of the Liquigas rider would be a trend noted by Kelly, namely that more and more - as was the case Wednesday in the Fleche - the final push is preceded by a big group of 25, 30 riders still in the hunt at the foot of the final climb.
"If that's the case then you just follow and in the difficult uphill final, if you're the strongest like he [Di Luca] has been the past two races, he could easily take anyone in the sprint."
Follow eurosport.com/.co.uk's LIVE coverage of Liège-Bastogne-Liège LIVE Sunday from 11:00 cet (10am British time) and watch as David Duffield and Sean Kelly bring you the finale LIVE at 16:30 cet (3:30 pm UK time).
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