Bahrain Victorious head to the final Monument of the Spring Classics and the Ardennes campaign with a strong line up led by Lenny Martinez and Santiago Buitrago.<\/p>\n
The 112th edition of La Doyenne, the oldest Monument on the cycling calendar, takes place on Sunday 26th April. Starting and finishing in Li\u00e8ge, the race covers a demanding 259.5km route, featuring 12 climbs and a total elevation gain of 4,395 metres.<\/p>\n
Buitrago returns to a race where he has enjoyed previous success, having finished on the podium in 2023. He will be joined by Lenny Martinez, who makes his debut at Li\u00e8ge Bastogne Li\u00e8ge. The young Frenchman will be aiming to bounce back after Fl\u00e8che Wallonne, where he lacked the legs on the Mur, but remains confident of delivering a strong result on a course that suits his punchy climbing abilities.<\/p>\n
In support, Martinez and Buitrago will be joined by Pello Bilbao, who is competing in his final season and will take on the race for the last time. The Basque rider has also shown strong form here in recent years, finishing inside the top ten in 2024.<\/p>\n
Antonio Tiberi, Fran Miholjevi\u0107, Afonso Eul\u00e1lio and Pau Miquel complete the line up, providing depth and support throughout the race, with the ability to cover moves and feature in key breakaways.<\/p>\n
Sports Director Enrico Gasparotto commented:
\u201cWe have the ambition to fight for the podium here, but we know it will be difficult with the level of competition and the favourites in the race. That said, we have a well balanced team with depth, which gives us different options. There are key moments in this race where it can really open up, and we need to be ready to take our chances. It\u2019s a long and demanding day, but the riders arrive in good condition, and with Buitrago\u2019s previous podium here, we know what is possible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Bahrain Victorious head to the final Monument of the Spring Classics and the Ardennes campaign with a strong…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-629670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=629670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}