Strava shows the staggering numbers behind Pogačar, Seixas and Vollering's Liège-Bastogne-Liège

Tadej Pogačar and Demi Vollering won Liège-Bastogne-Liège on Sunday — but it's the way they did it that will linger longest. The Slovenian world champion from UAE Team Emirates-XRG had to dig into his absolute best to drop Paul Seixas. Vollering dared to go solo from La Redoute for the first time in her career. The Strava files that came out afterwards make for spectacular reading.

Before we get to the segment records, the headline number. The men's Liège-Bastogne-Liège was raced at 44.4 km/h, according to Cycling Statistics — a 5.8% improvement on the previous record of 42 km/h. Some of that surely owes to Remco Evenepoel's presence in the early break, which forced UAE Team Emirates-XRG to chase for half the day.

For the women, the 2026 race went off at an average of 37.385 km/h, per Procyclingstats. That, too, was a huge step up on previous years: 35.878 km/h in 2025, 34.104 km/h in 2024, and 37.126 km/h in 2023 — though the 2023 race was 13.2 kilometres shorter than this year's edition.

Pogačar's Strava file is mostly gold, which is hardly surprising for the fastest-ever edition. A long string of personal records were needed first to chase Evenepoel down, then to start the run-in towards La Redoute on the front. On the climb itself, the Strava KOM fell — but not to Pogačar. Paul Seixas posted a time one second faster than the world champion, finishing the segment in 3:45.

The gap to other years is enormous. The KOM had been held since 2023 by Jarno Widar, whose 4:01 averaged 22.6 km/h. Seixas was 16 seconds quicker, Pogačar 15. Their average speed: 24.2 km/h. La Redoute is also part of the longer "Deel 3 Jemeppe" finale segment, on which Pogačar was 15 seconds faster than Alejandro Valverde's 2021 mark.

That was partly because the Strava KOM on the Roche-aux-Faucons fell as well — the climb where Pogačar finally broke Seixas. Pogačar covered it in 3:28, three seconds faster than David Gaudu in 2021. Including the run-in afterwards, a 4.32-kilometre segment, his record of 8:20 was even more striking — 11 seconds faster than Michał Kwiatkowski's mark from 2020.

After the men, it was the women's turn — and the records continued to fall. Vollering went on the attack with FDJ United-SUEZ from the foot of La Redoute. The European champion rode everyone off her wheel, and the women's race had been ridden faster than ever from start to finish. Vollering climbed La Redoute in 4:58 — three seconds faster than Annemiek van Vleuten's 2022 time.

The women's KOM, however, remains in the name of Eva van Agt, who apparently completed La Redoute in 4:53 back in 2025. The record on the full "LBL Finale" segment, though, does belong to Vollering: she covered the final 33.6 kilometres in 52:59 — a full 47 seconds faster than Elisa Longo Borghini's 2023 mark. And she didn't even need to set a record on the Roche-aux-Faucons to do it.