{"id":551964,"date":"2026-04-26T17:07:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:07:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/551964\/"},"modified":"2026-04-26T17:07:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T17:07:08","slug":"pogacar-holds-off-french-teen-to-claim-third-straight-liege-bastogne-liege-title-spring-classics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/551964\/","title":{"rendered":"Pogacar holds off French teen to claim third straight Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge title | Spring Classics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world champion, Tadej Pogacar<\/a>, pulled ahead of the 19-year-old French debutant Paul Seixas in the final climb to secure his third straight Li\u00e8ge-Bastogne-Li\u00e8ge title on Sunday, his fourth overall victory in the race.<\/p>\n

Pogacar finished the 259.5km race in five hours, 50 minutes and 28 seconds to win the 13th Monument title of his career and his third of the year after the Tour of Flanders<\/a> and Milan-San Remo.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt means a lot to win again one of the biggest races of the year, of cycling \u2026 there\u2019s a lot of pressure on me to deliver, I\u2019m really happy that we succeeded,\u201d said Pogacar, who is now one Li\u00e8ge title short of Belgium\u2019s Eddy Merckx, who won the race a record five times between 1969 and 1975.<\/p>\n

Seixas kept up with Pogacar when the Slovene stuck to the plan that brought him success in the last two years and launched his attack on the climb at the C\u00f4te de la Redoute, staying on the four-time Tour de France winner\u2019s wheel for nearly 20km while others fell behind.<\/p>\n

But during the climb to C\u00f4te de la Roche-aux-Faucons, with less than 14km left in the race, the 27-year-old Pogacar sped ahead, leaving an exhausted Seixas behind.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the Redoute I was really going deep. But on the top, he came next to me and I was like, OK, really impressed,\u201d Pogacar said about Seixas. \u201cMaybe back in my head, I was already preparing to do a duel sprint because he was so strong.\u201c<\/p>\n

Seixas, who was trying to become the first Frenchman to win the Li\u00e8ge title since 1980, finished 45 seconds behind Pogacar, while the Belgian two-time winner Remco Evenepoel won a sprint for third place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world champion, Tadej Pogacar, pulled ahead of the 19-year-old French debutant Paul Seixas in the final climb…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":551965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-551964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551964","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=551964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/551964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/551965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=551964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=551964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=551964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}