Faced by questions as to why they didn’t attack more in the finale of Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Andy Schleck and his brother were adamant that they did everything possible to try to beat Philippe Gilbert in the final Ardennes Classic.
“I don’t think we did any mistakes,” insisted the younger of the two siblings after the race. “Lotto had a lot of pressure on them, they had to ride pretty early. They used good riders early. We tried to isolate him [Gilbert]. I don’t think we could have asked more of the team. Frank and I were together with him but he was not beatable today.”
Prior to the race the two brothers had vowed to ride strongly to take the fight to the Classic specialist. They attacked hard on the Cote de la Roche aux Faucons, but the Belgian responded immediately, covering the move. The acceleration created an instant gap with the rest of the contenders and they were free to fight things out. The anticipated one-two attacks didn’t follow, though, although the reason for that became clear when Andy Schleck was briefly dropped when Gilbert took the initiative.
“I attacked on the bottom…I went 600 watts after 250 kilometres. That’s not easy,” he said, referring to his attempt on St Nicolas to push ahead.
“Maybe Frank could have attacked..maybe he tried, and Gilbert gave us a pretty good answer in dropping me on the last 300 metres. I didn’t panic. I kept my space, I knew I was going to come back as Frank wasn’t going to pull with Gilbert when I am 100 metres behind.”
The final outcome meant that he was unable to repeat his race win of two years ago. He took something positive from the day, though; “We could not beat Gilbert today, he was better, but I go to the Tour to win the Tour. We are totally different kind of riders….”
That point is true, and those that will square up against them in July will have taken note of the Schleck's form yesterday.