Philippe Gilbert last week showed some good form as racing nears a resumption by beating Romain Bardet’s all-time record on the La Redoute climb, but now his Strava record has been lowered further by a 20-year-old Dutch amateur rider, Mathijs Loman.
Bardet (Ag2r La Mondiale) set a time of 4:42 on the famed
climb last April, which was beaten by Gilbert by 17 seconds in a ride the
Lotto-Soudal man uploaded to Strava last Friday.
When announcing his new record on Twitter, Gilbert said: “Try
to beat it”. He explained he had broken the record at the suggestion of his
brother while they were filming a documentary.
The 17-second margin looked like a very comfortable one
but only the following day, Saturday, Gijs Leemreize, a 20-year-old from the
Jumbo Visma development team, beat the record by three seconds.
Advertisement
And yesterday Loman went event faster by clocking 4:15;
beating Leemreize’s time by seven seconds, Gilbert’s time by 10 seconds and
Bardet’s record from last year by 27 seconds.
The Côte de La Redoute has been
included in Liège–Bastogne–Liège. The ascent is located in Aywaille, is 1.6km
in length and had an average gradient of 9.5 per cent.
Related News
Loman rides for Tempo Hoppenbrouwers-Viro and at the end
of last year he made it to the last three in a competition on Zwift to secure a
contract with the NTT Pro Cycling U23 team.
The team place eventually went to Kiwi Drew Christensen,
who made the New Zealand junior team for the Yorkshire Worlds last year.
While Loman made it to the last three on the Zwift
Academy competition last December and has now broken the record on La Redoute,
little is known about him.
He has only ever ridden two UCI-ranked races; one as a
junior in 2017 and the Craft Ster van Zwolle (1.2) Dutch race in February of
this year before racing was suspended due to Covid19.
Topics
