Grand tours, monuments, cyclocross… this happens in Liège, Briançon and Valkenburg
There are places on the beautiful globe blessed by nature, beauty or chance. In cycling there are three in particular that draw from their location and extraordinary tradition. I suppose you can add a few more, but these three come to mind: Liège, Briançon and Valkenburg.
You know the first one very well, it is news once a year, of course, if not more.
It is the birthplace of the oldest, the Liège-Bastogne-Liège because it was the route that suited the journalists to come and go by train on race day, following the peloton.
The Tour also passes through Liege on a recurring basisif not directly, in transit
An edition of the Vuelta a España even took place in Liege and several world championships have been played in Liege.
Even Liege has hosted the World Cup, I remember one in Mariano Cañardo’s time when the Italians monopolized the competition.
Then there is Briançon, there in the valley, wedged between Izoard and Galibier, in the middle of an ocean of peaks with perpetual snow, at a crossroads, near Italy, near Sestriere, the gateway to the Aosta Valley.
Briançon and its citadel saw the Giro the same year and a few weeks later the Tour de France
If it is not the end of the stage, it is a city of passage. In the Olympus of cycling places, it is touched.
Cities blessed by cycling: Liège, Briançon and… Valkenburg.
Although if you want us to be honest, Valkenburg’s thing is to make things worse.
Nestled in Limburg, the edge of the Ardennes where the Netherlands stops being low.
In the heart of old Europe, the Dutch city is to cycling what Old Trafford is to football, the cathedral of the two-wheeled circus, an idyll of the place, the people and the landscape with the bicycle.
Valkenburg takes cycling for granted every year as it is a transit city, a thousand times, and the finish line of the Amstel Gold Race, the Dutch national bicycle and cycling festival.
Valkenburg has put an enclave like the Cauberg on the map, the violent climb in which Philippe Gilbert wreaks havoc, having won the Amstel Gold Race several times and even being world champion.
The city of Valkenburg, modest in size and population, has hosted the Road Cycling World Championships five times. Nothing more and nothing less.
Five cycling world championships have taken place in Valkenburg
We travel to 1938 and meet Marcel Kint, a German, who becomes world champion.
Ten years later, and three editions later, due to the hiatus of the Second World War, Valkenburg crowns Alberico Schotte, the Belgian who derived oil from the incredible rivalry of Bartali and Coppi, annulled in an impossible marking.
Year 1979. Jan Raas, the Amstel specialist, takes gold from Valnkenburg, beating Thurau and Bernaudeau in a sprint.
Already in ’98, Oskar Camenzind, Swiss from Mapei, was crowned champion on the day when everyone was looking at Michele Bartoli under the deluge of September in Limburg.
The Tour has also landed in Valkenburg, twice in addition. Giles Delion, a promising Frenchman, won in 1992, and Matthias Kessler, a German with an unhappy ending, in 2006.
Well, with this background, with an infinite number of races, tests and events related to two wheels, the Cyclocross World Championship landed five years ago in Valkenburg.
Imagen: G.Demouveaux
2024-05-13 22:01:11
#Bugnos #total #dominance #Giro #happened
