Ben Healy (EF Education-EasyPost) has put numbers to Tadej Pogačar’s decisive 2024 Liège–Bastogne–Liège attack, revealing he averaged 495 watts for roughly four and a half minutes on La Redoute, only to see the Slovenian ride 15 seconds clear.
Speaking on the Roadman Podcast published on YouTube, Healy said his race weight was around 62 kg, putting the effort at almost 8 W/kg, and admitted, “I am flipping trying… he’s just that much better than us.”
The acceleration came 34.8 km from the finish on La Redoute, listed at around 1.6 km at 9.4 percent. Even with the surge to chase Pogačar and a near 8 W/kg average across the whole effort, the gap opened instantly and kept growing. Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) crested alone, then pressed on to win solo, with race results confirming his second Liège title after a 35 km time trial to the line. He set a new record for the La Redoute segment on the day, underlining the scale of the move.
Healy’s candour gives a rare, quantified view of the cost of trying to follow Pogačar deep into a Monument.
Producing close to 8 W/kg for four to five minutes after six hours of racing is world-class by any measure. The fact it was insufficient to even limit the damage to single digits on the stopwatch is the striking takeaway. Healy said the gap on the climb was around 15 seconds. Some third-party analyses have suggested a larger delta, but the direction of travel is not in doubt, Pogačar was significantly faster despite an elite chase effort.
For context, La Redoute is one of Liège’s traditional launchpads, an anaerobic threshold effort that rewards explosive climbers with the resilience to hold a high baseline after the crest. The 2024 edition had UAE Team Emirates ushering their leader into the base in prime position, the speed high and the group already distilled. From there the pattern was familiar. Pogačar’s initial kick broke the elastic, he rolled the momentum over the top, then he turned the screw on the plateau and through the Côte des Forges to make the win a formality.
This is not the first time power disclosures have reframed expectations at the sharp end, but Healy’s numbers, delivered by a rider with proven Monument pedigree, provide a current benchmark. If approximately 495 W for four and a half minutes at about 62 kg results in an immediate and decisive time loss, rivals face a more binary choice when Pogačar lifts the pace, either pre-empt the move or commit above threshold and accept the physiological debt.
As Healy put it, the perception from television that “no one else is trying” belies the reality, attempts to follow are so costly that they can be self-defeating.
A quantified gap, and what it means
The emerging picture is that it will take more than simply a higher peak to contest these accelerations. Positioning and timing remain non-negotiable, but so does maintaining near 8 W/kg for three to five minutes in deep fatigue, then sustaining a very high aerobic output on the descent and flat.
Teams will lean further into layering riders through the approach, neutralising pace changes, and forcing Pogačar to respond earlier than he prefers.
Any strategic rethink has to be grounded in what the strongest chasers can actually do. Healy, a fourth-place finisher in Liège in 2023 and fifth in 2024, is not an outlier in a WorldTour one-day like this. His data implies that to even stand a chance of staying attached when Pogačar launches, contenders must couple maximal effort climbing with immediate, sustained power on the false flat that follows. Otherwise the elastic will snap on the steepest pitches and never returns.
Pogačar’s attack on La Redoute has already entered recent Liège lore, joining Evenepoel’s 2022 move in the same zone. Healy’s disclosure gives it sharper focus. With the 2025 Classics approaching, teams will calibrate training and race plans against that quantified bar. Whether anyone can meaningfully close the gap on La Redoute is the question that now defines the Ardennes spring.
