{"id":548957,"date":"2026-04-24T21:26:25","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:26:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/548957\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T21:26:25","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T21:26:25","slug":"an-afternoon-on-the-mur-de-huy-one-of-cyclings-mythical-climbs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/548957\/","title":{"rendered":"An afternoon on the Mur de Huy, one of cycling\u2019s mythical climbs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some look down. Others rock from side to side. A brave few rise from their saddles, though they cannot stay there for long. And as they climb past six shrines on the side of the road, prayers are hyperventilated to the skies.<\/p>\n

Usually, a WorldTour peloton passes the roadside with a sonic boom of displaced air; a kaleidoscope of sound and fury that is felt rather than truly seen. Not here, as riders lurch through the finishing barriers as if in slow motion, barely parting the wispy smoke of frying onions. These are speeds the rational mind can comprehend, if never hope to match; they move so slowly that the closest spectators can almost count the lines of suffering on the riders\u2019 contorted brows.<\/p>\n

This is the Mur de Huy \u2014 possibly Belgium\u2019s most famous climb. By its final ascent, in the 90th edition of La Fl\u00e8che Wallonne, it will have delivered two champions, one old, one new, in Demi Vollering, the year\u2019s dominant female rider, and 19-year-old Paul Seixas, perhaps the most talented teenager that cycling has ever seen.<\/p>\n

It is April and it is wisteria season, their violet bodies line Huy\u2019s stone walls like a descending peloton. Looming above is what locals simply call the Mur, the wall, and it truly is, a fence of rock and forest which hems the town tight to the Meuse River.<\/p>\n

Here, the Mur caps the horizon of both the landscape and the imagination. \u2018Huy\u2019 is stencilled every twenty metres across the road, a guttural syllable \u2014 say a hard \u2018h\u2019 and rhyme it with oy \u2014 which suitably evokes both romance and the need to retch, its \u2018u\u2019 italicised on the tarmac as if it, too, has run out of energy and slumped to the side.<\/p>\n

The raw facts, when listed, do not quite do the climb justice \u2014 a 1.3km ramp at an average gradient of 9.8 per cent \u2014 thought it does feature one brutal left-handed kink of 26 per cent at halfway up. In Fl\u00e8che Wallonne, the men\u2019s peloton ride it three times, the women twice, with both races finishing at its summit.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Fans make their way up the Mur early on Wednesday afternoon (Jacob Whitehead\/The Athletic)<\/p>\n

The brutality of this climb lies in its length. Somehow, it feels like cycling\u2019s version of the track 400m, a race short enough to be sprinted, but a distance that the human body is not made to sprint.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know it\u2019s going to be the most painful four minutes of the year,\u201d said Alpecin-Fenix\u2019s Puck Pieterse post-race, winner last year, second this time around. She was asked, in a follow-up, what thoughts were running through her mind as she desperately closed on Vollering\u2019s back wheel.<\/p>\n

Her reply could be a tagline for the race: \u201cI was thinking \u2018ow\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fl\u00e8che Wallonne is part of this region\u2019s identity; it differs from its older and more storied cousin Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge, to be raced on Sunday, by both feeling more localised and by including Wallonia in its name.<\/p>\n

In the 19th century, this town of 21,000 was known as \u2018city of millionaires\u2019, thriving on both the coal and textile business, but Wallonia\u2019s star waned as Flanders\u2019 flourished, the southern French-speaking half of Belgium struggling in the aftermath of deindustrialisation.<\/p>\n

This race is something for them, the town centre built on cycling. A local deli sells \u2018Van der Poulet\u2019 bagels, while from the riverside on raceday, a steady stream of camping chairs, coolboxes, and scarcely believable quantities of charcuterie meat are hauled to the Mur\u2019s slopes, serenaded by an impromptu balcony DJ set, many groups travelling faster than the cars sputtering uphill with them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s mythical,\u201d says Yves, a lifelong Huy resident. \u201cIt\u2019s part of our heritage, and that\u2019s why it\u2019s important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Others have more complex feelings. \u201cIt\u2019s weird, in the sense that for a couple of days each year, it\u2019s not our street anymore,\u201d says Gilles, who has lived in a pretty house directly on the Mur, just 50 metres from the finish line, for the past five years.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese guys from France come with a very strange accent and tell us how we should behave. But we are happy to share it with strangers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Yves, a resident of Huy, attends the race every season (Jacob Whitehead\/The Athletic)<\/p>\n

Gilles\u2019 neighbours include seven small whitewashed shrines, giving the climb its alternative name of Le Chemin des Chapelles (The Path of the Chapels).<\/p>\n

Essentially, Fl\u00e8che Wallonne is a race to the Church of Notre-Dame de la Sarte at its summit, a chapel that inspired feverish devotion in the 17th century after a story which involved a small statuette of the Virgin Mary which was providentially too heavy for a local woman to steal by slipping it into her woodpile. Perhaps the Virgin Mary cycled up; it would explain why she was so heavy-legged.<\/p>\n

But amidst this tradition, there is a small sense that Fl\u00e8che Wallonne has lost some of its old prestige. At points in its history, it rivalled Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge for importance \u2014 both were once raced consecutively as part of an \u2018Ardennes Weekend\u2019, with Fl\u00e8che given the plum Sunday slot.<\/p>\n

There have been complaints about both the race\u2019s shortened length \u2014 from 240km down to 200km \u2014 and its predictable pattern, with the past 24 editions ending in the peloton bunched at the bottom of the final climb, ready for a painful drag race to the top. From another perspective, the uniqueness of the final five kilometres are what makes Fl\u00e8che Wallonne unique \u2014 no other WorldTour race so resembles an en-masse hill-climb contest.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n The Church of Notre-Dame de la Sarte is at the Mur\u2019s summit (Jacob Whitehead\/The Athletic)<\/p>\n

Its position between Amstel Gold, the biggest race in the Netherlands, and Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge, the season\u2019s fourth Monument \u2014 means it is guaranteed eyeballs, but its midweek slot makes it somewhat of an afterthought, a tune-up skipped by Tadej Pogacar and Remco Evenepoel this year in favour of rest and relaxation.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s startlist, instead, was headlined by teenager Seixas, in the strange position of entering a one-day race as a favourite. That said, the list of recent men\u2019s winners is highly esoteric, ranging from the likes of Pogacar, Julian Alaphilippe, and five-time winner Alejandro Valverde, all with a claim to be amongst the best riders of their own generation, to the likes of Marc Hirschi, Dylan Teuns and Stephen Williams.<\/p>\n

The women\u2019s race, by contrast, invariably sees the cream rise \u2014 Nicole Cooke, Marianne Vos, Tour victors Vollering and Katarzyna Niewiadoma, and the scarcely believable seven-time champion Anna van der Breggen, riding again in 2026 after several years away, including a temporary retirement..<\/p>\n

What\u2019s the 36-year-old\u2019s secret to the Mur? \u201cThe climb just before it means you\u2019re not fully recovered from that effort,\u201d she said pre-race. \u201cAnd the Mur itself is just too long to go into it without pacing. You have to think about how you want to approach it.\u201c<\/p>\n

Vollering agrees. \u201cIt\u2019s not so much about tactics, but about having the legs. You have to dig really, really deep, and that can be a bit scary, because you don\u2019t want to blow up. You will just go backwards, and that means that riders can change position so quickly in the last few hundred metres.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Demi Vollering celebrates winning the 2026 Fleche Wallone (JOHN THYS \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

There are certain agreed rules about how to win. Fought over thin and twisting roads, positioning is essential \u2014 it is exceptionally rare for any rider to win having entered the foot of the climb outside the top 10.<\/p>\n

Typically, the winning rider will also avoid making the first serious attack \u2014 though Pogacar took a butcher\u2019s knife to that sacred cow with his dominant victory last year \u2014 by ensuring they have something in the tank for the final few hundred metres.<\/p>\n

So it was on Wednesday. In the women\u2019s race, Vollering did everything by the book \u2014 placing herself in the front three, riding a high tempo, at her pace, to distance the more explosive riders \u2014 and earning a gap of some 20 metres by three-quarters of the way up the Mur, a relative eternity on these slopes.<\/p>\n

Vollering had, however, hit the ragged edge by the closing metres, with Puck Pieterse closing to her back wheel with an inspired final sprint, the 23-year-old coming within a few pedal-strokes of defending her title.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe scared me for sure,\u201d Vollering said. \u201cI saw her in the pedals (behind me) and was like: \u2018Oh my god.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Seixas, meanwhile, crossed the line alone. His is a preternatural talent still exploring its own boundaries \u2014 this was the most significant win of his career so far, becoming, at 19 years and 210 days, the youngest winner of Fl\u00e8che Wallonne in history, pushing Philemon De Meersman and Eddy Merckx into second and third respectively.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n No one in the men\u2019s peloton could match Seixas\u2019 pace on Wednesday (Bernard PAPON \/ POOL \/ AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

His ride was remarkable in its maturity. Rather than exploding the bunch too early, and risking his own legs in the process, Seixas visibly rode to his pace, save for three considered accelerations \u2014 at the foot of the climb, just after the steepest bend of 26 per cent, and finally, with everything he had, with 300m to go to the line. Nobody got near his wheel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI admit that, honestly, we had a very different plan this morning,\u201d Seixas said. \u201cBut I did it by feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so here\u2019s one more omen. Twelve years ago, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot became the youngest woman to win Fl\u00e8che Wallonne. Later, she became the first Frenchwoman to win the Tour de France.<\/p>\n

Seixas has emulated the first part of her record. Next week, his Decathlon CMA-CGM team are expected to announce whether he will ride his first Tour de France. Seixas\u2019 display on the Mur de Huy\u2019s famous slopes is the latest evidence that he has the talent to complete the second half too \u2014 it is a mantle he wears remarkably lightly.<\/p>\n

By the time the 19-year-old finishes speaking, it is virtually empty on the Mur, the climb hollowed out and emptied into the bars below. There are two separate sweeper crews, one for the barriers, one for the litter, a group in bucket hats finish their beers in the last of the evening sun, and at its base, a running club, the road theirs now, begin their own repetitions up the hill.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some look down. Others rock from side to side. A brave few rise from their saddles, though they…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,417,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-548957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-global-sports","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}