CS expert panel: Amstel Gold

published 14 April 2011

The hilly Classics kick off on Sunday, with the Amstel Gold Race. Cycle Sport's team of experts analyse the race and make their predictions for the outcome.

Amstel Gold suffers a little because it's younger than all the others – first run in 1966 – and because it takes its name from a sponsor. As a race it's on the same level as Fléche Wallonne in terms of prestige, I'd say. In fact, it has risen in status since they swapped the running order so that Liège-Bastogne-Liège, rather than Amstel Gold concludes the spring Classic season. It benefits from being a warm-up for Liège rather than a consolation prize for those who missed out. Bear in mind that until the mid-1990s, the Amstel Gold often clashed with the Vuelta a Espana too, so it's definitely more important than it used to be.

I remember watching the Tour de France in about 1985 or 1986 and two riders were away, I can't recall who they were but one was Dutch. Anyway, the Dutchman sat on for ages, then attacked to win and Phil Liggett said: "It just goes to show, you can never trust a Dutchman." It was the sort of comment that would spark a Twitter outrage these days but what Liggett was saying was that the Dutch riders did have this reputation that they would do anything, tactically speaking, to get the upper hand on their opponents. It springs to mind because my earliest memory of Amstel Gold was reading in Cycling Weekly that Malcolm Elliott had been worked over by three Dutchmen in a break in 1987. The intro to the report read: "Three patriotic Dutchmen joined forces to defeat England's Malcolm Elliott at Amstel Gold on Saturday. A British win would have rocked Holland's cycling prestige, so Joop Zoetemelk, Steven Rooks and Teun Van Vliet buried their differences for a day and combined to blunt the feared sprint of Elliott."

From actually watching the race, the first image I can conjure is the moment in 1999 when Markus Zberg and Gabriele Missaglia, who were chasing Lance Armstrong and Michael Boogerd, came to grief as they went round a left-hand bend. A motorbike, one of the photographers, I think, had parked on the outside of the corner – the worst possible place to stop. As the two riders swung wide to get round the corner without losing too much speed, they clipped the bike and went down.

Without wishing to spoil anyone's enjoyment, there is a fundamental issue that blights the Ardennes Classics. I am not for a moment suggesting their cobbled counterparts are whiter than white but in the past decade Amstel Gold has been won by Alexandre Vinokourov, Davide Rebellin, Danilo Di Luca and Stefan Schumacher – all of whom have served doping suspensions for serious and blatant cheating. Even Serguei Ivanov has had a brush with the rules. In 2000 he was prevented from starting the Tour de France at the last minute when he failed a haematocrit test.

Liège-Bastogne-Liège has some truly iconic hills. Flèche Wallonne has the Mur de Huy. Amstel Gold has the Cauberg. The 2000 race was won by Erik Zabel – a sprinter – from a 14-man group. It wasn't just that the race was won by a sprinter but that the size of the group arriving at the finish was getting bigger. In 2003, the organisers moved the finish line to the top of the Cauberg. It's not a ridiculously steep hill but it is long, it wends up through the back of Valkenburg. At the bottom there are lots of bars and cafes, meaning there can be a real stadium atmosphere on race day. The rest of the route lacks the definition of Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Eyserbosweg is no La Redoute. What makes Amstel Gold challenging is that there are so many climbs – 32 in all. The country lanes are extremely narrow and twisty. The roads through the towns are littered with street furniture and traffic-calming measures – speed bumps, raised kerbs and chicanes. This makes positioning very important.

Strictly speaking, no. It just doesn’t have the history or USPs of the other Classics. It’s a great hilly one-day race with a nice parcours, but by that definition, the Cycle Sport/Cycling Weekly lunchtime ride is a Classic. Still, the definition seems to be elastic, so while I'm prepared to say that I don't consider it a true Classic, I'm not concerned enough about it to enter into a Twitter debate about it.

Dutchman Frans Maassen winning the 1991 race has always stuck in my mind, not for the racing, but because it was an object lesson in the realities of cycling for a naive teenager. He beat the much faster Maurizio Fondriest in a sprint, putting his win down to “miracle legs” in his finish line interview. Neutral observers might have put it down to him taking the Italian from one side of the road to the other. Still, you don’t disqualify Dutch riders in Dutch Classics, do you?

I’m a sucker for a hilly race, so I like it, even though it’s not quite as special a route as Liège. Don’t underestimate the Cauberg, not just the climb, but the short false flat at the top – the sprint needs brute strength, and just enough tactical nous to get the timing right. I also recommend that every cycling fan in the world spends at least one race day on the Cauberg. Any climb that is lined by pubs and bars is fine by me.

Sure, it doesn’t have the history or prestige of its neighbours. In fact, with its Monument-surrounded position in the calendar, it comes out as the unflashy Jermaine Jenas (sorry Spurs fans) figure when the other ones dazzling the fans are Messi, Cristiano Ronaldo and Kaka. But all in all, it’s a good race, deserving of its Classic status. The final 20 kilometres are full of suspense, the closing climbs throw up tense chase scenarios and the atmosphere on the Cauberg is electric. It whets the appetite nicely for the coming week.

2001 when Erik Dekker outsprinted Lance Armstrong for the win. It was a bit of a fairer fight than two years previously when another Rabobank man – Michael Boogerd – sat on Armstrong’s wheel in the closing stages and then pipped him on the line. This time, we had Dekker fighting across to join Armstrong and Eddy Mazzoleni in the front group and, after ridding themselves of the Italian on the Keutenberg, Dekker defied team orders to work with Armstrong right up to the final 500 metres where the pair almost came to a standstill, like they were involved in a track sprint, with Serge Baguet all the while approaching quickly from behind to close the gap and add to the suspense. Great stuff.

Pretty good. Having waxed lyrical about Dekker, I’m now thinking this could be their year again, having had an excellent start to the season as a team. I’m thinking Gesink... But Freire could be up there again, too, although he’s never quite seemed to have had the legs on the Cauberg in the past. Maarten Tjallingii showed he’s clearly on form at Roubaix last weekend, while Paul Martens, as Rabobank’s highest finisher last year, will be hoping to take his chance, too.

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Edward Pickering is a writer and journalist, editor of Pro Cycling and previous deputy editor of Cycle Sport. As well as contributing to Cycling Weekly, he has also written for the likes of the New York Times. His book, The Race Against Time, saw him shortlisted for Best New Writer at the British Sports Book Awards. A self-confessed 'fair weather cyclist', Pickering also enjoys running.

CS expert panel: Amstel Gold

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