Ben Healy grabbed a place on a Monument podium for the first time in the final Ardennes Classic of the season, Liege-Bastogne-Liege as Tadej Pogacar claimed his third victory in the Belgian classic.

The Slovenian world champion launched a stunning solo attack 34km from the finish, just as he had last year.

Pogacar launched his attack on the climb at the iconic Cote de la Redoute and put some distance between his rivals, eventually finishing the 252km route with a time of six hours and nine seconds.

The UAE Team Emirates rider finished 63 seconds ahead of Italian Giulio Ciccone and Healy, who completed the podium after a sprint for second place.

“We’ve seen so many times, Tadej has this nuclear attack on these climbs and if you follow him you just burn yourself,” Healy told reporters.

“Our plan all along was to set a steady tempo, or as steady as you can go. You saw at Amstel [Gold Race] the other day, we held the gap and people were able to jump across to him. That was always our plan from the beginning. It didn’t quite go that way.

“I don’t think we were hanging about, but I think Tadej was just on another level today.”


The podium finishers after the race

Pogacar was understandably pleased with how his race panned out.

“It feels great to finish the first part of the season like this. I’m just happy that the whole season so far went perfect,” Pogacar said.

“It wasn’t the plan (to attack on La Redoute), but it was such a hard pace before that I saw a number of teams didn’t have a lot of team-mates anymore.

“I said ‘OK, I’ll test my legs a little bit and see if I can get a gap on the top’ and then I’ll decide if I continue or not. Then I just committed because I had good legs, also on the second climb after La Redoute.”

Last year, Pogacar finished one minute and 39 seconds after a solo attack with 34km remaining.

Pogacar now has nine monument victories which puts him joint-third on the all-time list behind only Eddy Merckx (19) and Roger De Vlaeminck (11).

The 26-year-old also became the first rider to finish on the podium in six straight Monument races.

Another podium at the Giro di Lombardia in October would make him the first man to finish on the podium in all five in the same year.

Additional reporting: Reuters