Racing

Liege-Bastogne-Liege 2015 preview: the key climbs

Where Sunday's Monument will be won or lost

La Doyenne

Philippe Gilbert battles his way up the Stockeu last year, one of the key climbs in Liege-Bastogne-Liege (Pic: Sirotti)
The Cote de Stockeu may be short - but it's very steep (Pic: Sirotti)
The Stockeu wounds you, but it is the Haute-Levee that finishes you off - just ask Joaquim Rodriguez, who was dropped on the ascent last year (pic: Sirotti)
Julien Arredondo goes deep as he battles with Jan Bakelants on La Redoute (pic: Sirotti)
The residential street of the Cote de Saint-Nicolas may not look pretty but it offers a last chance for a solo attack (pic: Sirotti)
Joaquim Rodriguez (Katusha, left) and Dan Martin (Cannondale-Garmin, right) race up the final, uncategorised ascent at Liege-Bastogne-Liege (Pic: Sirotti)

La Doyenne

The fourth Monument of the season, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, is the oldest and most prestigious of the Ardennes Classics and rounds off the spring Classics season on Sunday.

Liege-Bastogne-Liege is the final one-day race on the UCI WorldTour calendar until August’s Clasica Ciclista San Sebastian and has been billed by four-time winner Moreno Argentin as a ‘trial by elimination’ thanks to the short climbs which punctuate the route.

Most of the ascents feature in the latter half of the 253km race, and what they lack in length they make up for in steepness and regularity.

Indeed, the longest ascent, the Col du Rosier, is just 4.4km long and La Redoute, which will see around 10,000 spectators crammed on the roadside, is just 2km in length.

All in all there are ten categorised climbs on the route (and many more uncategorised rises) and we’ve selected the five ascents where the race will won and lost.