Product Review

Nothing is as hard as being the all-out favorite, on home soil, in the greatest two races of your region. Defeat is never so painful - and victory never so desired. Such a challenge faced Philippe Gilbert, Belgium's new King of the Classics, this spring on the narrow, verdant, tree lined hills and lung-burstingly painful ascents of Fleche Wallone and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. For all he had trained countless times on the roads of Fleche Wallone, Gilbert believed, and repeatedly said, he was no favorite. The dreaded Mur de Huy climb, touching 30 percent on the inside of its steepest corners, were just too hard.