Leopard Trek hoping for a little luck in the Ardennes hills
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Fränk and Andy Schleck at the pre-Liège-Bastogne-Liège press conference.(Image credit: Stephen Farrand)
Frank Schleck is coming into form(Image credit: Sirotti)
Philippe Gilbert may be the huge favourite for Liège-Bastogne-Liège but Andy Schleck and his Leopard Trek teammates are determined to try and beat the Belgian with an aggressive race strategy in the hope of isolating him from his Omega Pharma-Lotto teammates.
At the Leopard Trek pre-race press conference, Andy and Frank Schleck again insisted Gilbert was beatable but warned that the ‘Doyenne’ of the classics is not just a battle against Gilbert.
“He’s beatable. It’s 260 kilometres; it’s not an easy race but don’t just want to beat Gilbert; we want to win the race,” Frank said.
“For Gilbert it doesn’t have to be a really hard race. For us, it has to be,” Andy pointed out. “We cannot sit back and wait. He can win in a sprint of 100.”
Leopard Trek has got close to victory in the cobbled classics with Fabian Cancellara but just came up short. Andy Schleck is hungry to land the team’s first big win and believes they just need a little luck to be able to crack the nut of fortune.
"We're just missing a little bit of luck to win a Classic. We could have won I believe three or four Classics if we'd had a little bit of luck, it's a big factor in cycling. You need it and we haven't had it yet but I'm sure one day the nut will open and we will win." he said on video.
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Stephen is the most experienced member of the Cyclingnews team, having reported on professional cycling since 1994. He has been Head of News at Cyclingnews since 2022, before which he held the position of European editor since 2012 and previously worked for Reuters, Shift Active Media, and CyclingWeekly, among other publications.
