There is a difference between getting the draft from a team car and going 70K/hr back to the peloton, and sitting behind the team car that is in a convoy of cars, behind the peloton. If you're sitting in between cars, you're not doing anything wrong. If you're doing a Zingle / Nils Eekhoff (Glasgow WC) move, you should be DSQ. As far as I could see, the Visma train in MSR was behind their team car, but that team car was in a convoy of team cars. I could be wrong though.
- Aug 12, 2012
- 7,017
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if he is allowed to wheelsuck, he must wheel suck, it is and advantage in cycling and that is how you win races. There are rules, and start point, a finish lije, you have to get the finish line first, It was Pogacar who passed firt coccle sections, and after that, look at van aert to pull, so it is Pogacar blame.Van aert always collaborate, as Pogacar recognized, except a moment before carrefour, where laporte was close and no pulling and the car get Van aert and order him to stop pulling. That was just about 5 km..no more, and maybe van aeet was pulling about 40 %, maybe 35% overall, biut last 2 km it was pogacar who was in the front andwanted to get first on the velodrome..it is his blame.
For Pogacar beat Van Aert at Roubaix, one of tghe best cyclist of this era, made for cobbles, vciclocros worl champion, quite similar to Van der Poel for this kin of race, and mainly, with a more better sprint than Pogacar, the only one who dropred pogacar last Tour...not just at Cobless..but at a climb with cobbles, you need to stay no more than 30 % pulling and make a perfect sprint, taking the wheel of Van aeert fron the begining by sprint at the same time (he didnt)....so the difference a the sprint was big. The stronger was MVDP, but cycling is not to be the stronger. anyway Van aert was really strong. he did hard attacks on the cobbles, and he counter attack Pogacar really well and he beated him very clearly at the sprint pullin maybe 40 % of the time...so, I dont think he was weaker than Pogacar, as it is logical in a flat race with hard cobbles sections for a man with the weight of Pogacar.
Maybe Pogacar prefer comae back in 2 years when is predictable WVA and Vdp are maybe not peaking of his career, but there is the risk a young rider appears next year and become a new star for this kinof races and 2028 could be late..and of course PR is like a lottery, you need luck..you have to participate to get the result one year.
I am grateful he participates this 2 years, becouse it is no normal,,,and he has been 2 times second, showing how complete rider he is againt 2 super talentes riders for PR.
But he had the oportunity to make history this time en had to use everything for that..and the team told him that he can beat everybody after a hard race (whatever the route) acting at the end as he was favoruite to win: that is quite nonsense, and the team deserved this result and Pogacar the same to belive that arrogant thought.
You really seem to try hard to stretch it. From what I saw, the pulling was around 40% WvA en 60% Pog.
And the main culprit was Pog: he tried 4 times to drop WvA: on Bersee (just after WvA's attack), Mons-en-Pevele, the uphill after Mons-en-Pevele and Carrefour. He also tried to put pressure on e.g. Pont-Thibault (the famous right/left hander chicane kind of secteur where he crashed in 2025).
You cannot expect a rider, that's committed to go to the velodrome with you, to immediately pull through after you tried to drop him. If you want 50/50, don't attack the other rider. Simple as that.
But besides these events, WvA didn't scare away from continuing to pull with Pog and in those kilometers the pulling at the front was fairly even. WvA pulled most (if not all) of e.g. Cysoing a Bourghelles and Bourghelles a Wannehain.
There were good reasons he wasn't pulling all the time on all the cobbles: Pog knew he had to drop WvA so he tried to attack on the cobbles. In order not to be surprised, WvA allowed Pog in front in order to keep a close eye on him. I reckon WvA had the legs to attack Pog on the last couple of secteurs but was just confident in his sprint. And in the end, Pog was cooked. He was happy to have WvA pulling with him and keeping the chasers behind. If not, he wouldn't have made the podium.
- Sep 26, 2020
- 26,690
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There has been some talk about Pogačar's weight this year, but here he definitely looks bigger than ever.
- Aug 12, 2012
- 7,017
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- 20,680
And Pogacar has as well the option to stop, but he didnt ask WVA for more pulls, as it happends at San Remo
- Jul 7, 2013
- 8,972
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Do you mean the moment when he told Remco not to be afraid of Roglic?
I don't recall any incidents regarding the duo.
There's simply a limit on what Pog can achieve in a flat race with his all-in / long-solo riding style, and he hit the wall twice in Roubaix. People can argue other riders aren't as crazy as he is, but why should they be?
And some races are won by a tiny bit of tactics (and luck and no mechanicals and crashes etc) next to raw power/kg. If every race should be won with power/kg, we would have borefests like Flanders, LBL and Lombardia have become in the Pog era.
But luckily we have 'easy' Monuments like MSR and flat ones like Roubaix, as those are at the limit of what Pog can win and those are the monuments he won't easily win / dominate. And those are the most exciting to watch.
Pog simply has to come up with a different tactical plan or at least some more flexibility because he won't win Roubaix like this easily, even though he would always be very close.
And some races are won by a tiny bit of tactics (and luck and no mechanicals and crashes etc) next to raw power/kg. If every race should be won with power/kg, we would have borefests like Flanders, LBL and Lombardia have become in the Pog era.
But luckily we have 'easy' Monuments like MSR and flat ones like Roubaix, as those are at the limit of what Pog can win and those are the monuments he won't easily win / dominate. And those are the most exciting to watch.
Pog simply has to come up with a different tactical plan or at least some more flexibility because he won't win Roubaix like this easily, even though he would always be very close.
It's a mentality that seems to set in once you are with the dominant team of the moment. Politt has it too, and in the past Sky/Postal/Visma have all shown it. It's like they lose any other perspective the moment they become #1
Can you provide the sources you are asking in others threads?
Apparently, you can make claims without citing sources.
A statement that in no way reflects what he says.
But some of us have to offer something empirical, not interpretations, even if L´equipe himself says that a cyclist has said something.
True. And though the rain never seems to happen for Roubaix, if there was a rainy edition in the next few years I think that makes it even more disadvantageous for Pogacar. Not because he doesn't ride well in the rain. But in each of the last two edition he went off the road in near disastrous fashion trying to follow MVDP (last year) and Van Aert (this year, and I don't mean his slip on the muddy cobbles coming out of the corner). This Sunday he stayed upright but either one of those could have completely ended his race. Or perhaps it would just makes the race more random for all of them, which still works against the strongest winning.
- Jul 31, 2024
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Was tadej the strongest? I mean he's stronger than WVA & MVDP on most terrain. But on flat roads and cobbles?
Equal maybe, but clear strongest? Not sure. I think MVDP was the strongest. With Pogacar second and WVA right after him, but close enough that he would not get dropped on flat terrain.
What does 'stronger' actually mean? People use it as a throwaway comment without actually knowing what it means.
Tadej doesn't have to be stronger uphill, as he's significantly lighter.....and his better w/kg allows him to ride away. To me that isn't being 'stronger'.......
I have specifically endorsed Wout's tactics. The point of a race is to win it; not get the highest honorary "tryer" award. The main point being Tadej's presence at the front kept the pressure on chasers, one of which was Wout's teammate. How does anyone think this race would turn out if Tadej suddenly crashed or quit pulling at 50km from the finish? Wout's finish doesn't happen with Pogacar's effort; however compromised that might have been.
I wonder if anyone wore old school tubulars and how they fared? The focus seems squarely on the wheels and tire clearance for the fattest. The tire choice to go wider definitely makes the ride more comfy. Is the rigidity of the wheels contributing to pinch failures or bead disconnections?
- Aug 12, 2012
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Pogavacar has never face Remco at Liege os similar percours races with boyh at a good level. He has attacked from far necouse he didnt have a real contender or behind him didnt collaborate properly. But if he is ar Lieje alone and close to him are Remco and Seixas I am sure they will cacthed him. and later everythjing could happen
I actually don’t care who was the strongest and I don’t really understand the need for that (obviously it’s important to other folks and that’s their thing). In this case I used strongest too loosely I guess—better to say the rider who might be favorite or among the favorites in dry conditions would be at a bigger disadvantage in rain.
All jokes aside, when you look at the Top10 at this Roubaix:
View: https://x.com/laflammerouge16/status/2043377311194485120
the average, of those not named Pogacar, was 76.7 kg.
Pog is 66kg and the only one under 70kg in the top10.
- Aug 13, 2011
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Pidcock then would have thrown away second or better by gambling. WVA had a teammate that could help him in the finish who has a good sprint themselves.
- Aug 13, 2011
- 8,112
- 12,630
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Why do you think that? I don’t really remember any issues between the two of them.
- Jul 30, 2011
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This has been known for awhile, but brings some detail
The history here is tangible but idiosyncratic. Paint peels behind chainlink fences, the surface of the velodrome track is cracked and weed-strewn. Lycra-clad men drink coffee as volunteers stretch a giant banner across the infield.
In a neighbouring building, the ancient shower block is made up of dozens of concrete cubicles, where the water is produced by yanking on a bare metal chain. On the outside of each cubicle, a burnished golden plaque features a name, a title, and a year, or perhaps several. “Merckx E, Vainquer, 1968, 1970, 1973”, reads one.
The showers at the velodrome in Roubaix. What they lack in water pressure, they make up for in historyJacob Whitehead/The Athletic
These are the winners of Paris-Roubaix, the world’s toughest one-day bike race: a 250km (155-mile) slog across cobbles and mud in northern France. It vibrates and thrums with suffering; laying waste to a rider’s legs, then their brain, and then their spirit. This is the so-called l’Enfer du Nord — the Hell of the North.
“It’s b******s, this race!” said Dutch rider Theo de Rooij, famously, after abandoning his challenge in the 1985 edition. “You’re working like an animal, you don’t have time to p**s — you wet your pants. You’re riding in mud, you’re slipping. It’s a piece of s**t…”
Would he ride it again, asked John Tesh, a reporter for American broadcaster CBS.
“Sure, it’s the most beautiful race in the world!” replied De Rooij.
Mathon agrees.
If this hell has a soul, it can be found here, in the offices of Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix (The Friends of Paris-Roubaix), as The Athletic visits two days before the 2026 race tomorrow (Sunday).
The organisation is made up of volunteers, all of them working to safeguard its future — especially its kilometres upon kilometres of cobbles. Tadej Pogačar’s parents were due to visit later that evening, ahead of their son’s bid to make history.
Guy Mathon is the vice-president of Les Amis de Paris-RoubaixJacob Whitehead/The Athletic
“Our aim is to defend the race,” explains Mathon, LAPR’s vice-president. “‘Against what?’ Against the deterioration and disappearance of the cobbles. If there is no more pavé, there will be no more racing. You can visit some of the cobbles today and they will be fine. In three months, they will be wrecked.”
The cobbles bear years of history, not just from bike racing, but from life. When these tracks were originally dirt roads connecting farmers’ fields across a deeply working-class area of France, winter turned them into trenches of mud.
“The horse-and-carts would get bogged down and frozen in the paths. Business could not be done,” explains Mathon. “So the cobbles were introduced to make them passable — carrossable, we say in French. So these roads come from the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, over two hundred years ago. It is a legacy from the past, heritage in motion.
“But now, trucks pass by. There are tractors. These are very heavy. And then there is the wear and tear of time, the water that infiltrates and weakens the surface. We have to monitor that and fix it — I believe that Paris-Roubaix must remain hard. But for me, it has to (also) be safe.”
So over cycling’s offseason, dozens of volunteers venture onto the farm tracks of this region near the France-Belgium border to monitor the condition of the cobbles — working through rain, hail, and occasionally sun, just as its agricultural workers have done for centuries. If a cobble is broken, it gets replaced with another that is in keeping with the surrounding rocks — there are four predominant types across the Roubaix route. This year, in the men’s race, there are over 50km of cobbled sectors.
“There is so much pavé that we don’t know how to fix it all at once,” says Mathon. “So we have to go by sections and priority.”
This is not a race on cobbles but a race ofcobbles; the two are so inseparable that the event’s winners are presented with one mounted on a plinth. In the next room to where Mathon is speaking to us, dozens of trophies line the shelves — including the 2020 prize, which was never awarded as the Covid-19 pandemic forced the race to be scrapped.
Who will lift this trophy on Sunday?Jacob Whitehead/The Athletic
But the power of this symbolism has led to issues. The great beauty of cycling is that its stadiums are the same roads on which we walk, drive, and even ride ourselves. A football fan will almost certainly never take a free kick at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro, while only the fortunate few amateur golfers may ever round Augusta’s Amen Corner. But anybody can access the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix — and some choose to take them home as a memento.
“This is an issue I first noticed four years ago,” says Mathon. “There were more and more missing cobblestones. I have two theories. The first is that it’s a theft by someone who is a little bit unaware and is taking a souvenir for home, like a collector’s item. Or maybe, and I hope it’s not this, but a kind of sabotage.
“Why am I saying this? I find it unusual and really very strange that on the Arenberg sector, which is 2.4km long, the cobbles are stolen from the middle of the sectors — the crown of the road, where the riders ride. If it’s a simple theft, then surely it’s a little bit (taken) from the right, a little bit from the left, a little bit in the middle, a little bit everywhere. But no, it’s really in a straight line, and that catches my attention. Why do they do it like that?”
That morning, he dispatched two volunteers to the Trouee d’Arenberg to fix these holes, the pair needing to employ a temporary solution with just 48 hours to go until the race — plugging them with a mix of sand and cement that will harden by Sunday. But, with the area packed with tourists ahead of the race, and no surveillance in the forest which lines it, Mathon worries that more thefts could occur.
“I hope it’s just people stealing a collector’s item for their home, and not sabotage,” he adds. “People don’t realise that when the riders’ carbon wheels hit a hole at 50kph (31mph), the wheel can explode or dismantle and cause a serious crash, or maybe even, given the impact, ruin a career, just because someone took a cobble.
“It scares me for the riders, and I hope it’s more stupidity than deliberate vandalism. We’re going to have to take action.”
Visiting Arenberg later in the day, the repair marks are still visible in the height of the midday sun.
This is Paris-Roubaix’s most famous sector, despite usually taking place over 100km from the finish at Roubaix’s velodrome. It was first discovered by Jean Stablinski, a longtime teammate of five-time Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil in the 1950s and 1960s who described himself as “the only rider to have ridden over and under it”, having worked as a youth in the coal mines that dominated this part of his homeland.
One of just three sections of pavé given a “five-star” difficulty rating — former LAPR president Francois Doulcier once said of it, “Objectively speaking, it’s the worst-maintained sector of cobbles in the whole race” — it’s liable to make riders shudder through both fear and the reverberations that come with passing over it.
“It’s the true definition of hell,” Italian rider Filippo Pozzato has said. “It’s very dangerous, especially in the first kilometre, when you enter it at over 60kph. It’s incredible. The bike goes in all directions. It’s a real spectacle, but I don’t know if it’s really necessary to put us through it.”
Some 10,000 fans will be here on race day; already, several amateurs are testing whether they can navigate its 2.4km length ahead of the amateur sportive on Saturday. Its danger is latent; 1996 winner Johan Museeuw shattered a kneecap here two years later, before returning to claim two more editions in the following four years.
So far, the section has not been introduced to the women’s race owing to safety fears over the potential size of the peloton when it passes through, with Arenberg being so close to the start (which is 10km away in Denain, rather than Paris; similarly, the men’s event actually begins in Compiegne, an hour’s drive north of the capital). A chicane was introduced in 2024 to slow the riders’ speed, located right next to a railway level crossing that competitors will hope does not sound on Sunday, after the events at last weekend’s Ronde van Vlaanderen.
Two teams whizz past on a reconnaissance ride — French squads TotalEnergies and Groupama-FDJ, grim-faced and focused in their lines.
A few remaining missing cobbles aside, the course is at its best — helped by an unusual flock of helpers. Around 40 goats have spent the previous two months here, nibbling away at the excess vegetation.
Goats are used to prepare the cobbles for cycling’s GOATsAnne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images
“During Covid, we realised that the grass in the Forest of Arenberg was growing back really quickly, so we said we needed to find solutions,” race organizer ASO’s course designer Thierry Gouvenou told Cycling Weekly.
“We tried sweeping, using fire to burn the grass away and trailing a giant brush behind a tractor. The problem with the brush is that it cleans too deeply, and the riders complained about it being dangerous, because their tires would go between the cobblestones. So why not eco-grazing?”
Organizers work with a charity, Espoir Avenir, which offers work experience to the region’s unemployed, with Pas-de-Calais suffering massively in the wake of deindustrialisation.
Roubaix, in particular, is one of the most deprived towns in France, with 46 per cent of the population living under the poverty line. Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix works with the local horticultural college in an attempt to help teach the younger generation vocational skills.
“They are very proud to see that the riders, on Sunday, will pass over their repairs,” explains Mathon. “This is a working-class area. Yes, it is a race, it is true, but it is above all a unifying event for us, a mobilising event. It’s about sharing what we see with our neighbor.
“Obviously, the race itself is very exciting, because despite the modernism of cycling right now, maybe it’s the only race in the world that retains the difficulties and characteristics of a century ago.
“No matter what, the riders, from the first to the last, will be heroes on Sunday night. And that’s what the public comes to see. It is the greeting of those heroes, of the people who will succeed in finishing, or maybe even winning, that is what matters.”
“It was here, in the velodrome, that I learned to walk,” says Guy Mathon, framed, as he speaks, by technicolour jerseys, ancient bikes and dozens of cobblestones.
“I grew up in the cycling world, and the cycling world was fascinating in the eyes of a child. I competed, but then, well, I had to work to raise my family. But Paris-Roubaix has given me so much that I am trying to give back what I can to Paris-Roubaix.”The history here is tangible but idiosyncratic. Paint peels behind chainlink fences, the surface of the velodrome track is cracked and weed-strewn. Lycra-clad men drink coffee as volunteers stretch a giant banner across the infield.
In a neighbouring building, the ancient shower block is made up of dozens of concrete cubicles, where the water is produced by yanking on a bare metal chain. On the outside of each cubicle, a burnished golden plaque features a name, a title, and a year, or perhaps several. “Merckx E, Vainquer, 1968, 1970, 1973”, reads one.
The showers at the velodrome in Roubaix. What they lack in water pressure, they make up for in historyJacob Whitehead/The Athletic
These are the winners of Paris-Roubaix, the world’s toughest one-day bike race: a 250km (155-mile) slog across cobbles and mud in northern France. It vibrates and thrums with suffering; laying waste to a rider’s legs, then their brain, and then their spirit. This is the so-called l’Enfer du Nord — the Hell of the North.
“It’s b******s, this race!” said Dutch rider Theo de Rooij, famously, after abandoning his challenge in the 1985 edition. “You’re working like an animal, you don’t have time to p**s — you wet your pants. You’re riding in mud, you’re slipping. It’s a piece of s**t…”
Would he ride it again, asked John Tesh, a reporter for American broadcaster CBS.
“Sure, it’s the most beautiful race in the world!” replied De Rooij.
Mathon agrees.
If this hell has a soul, it can be found here, in the offices of Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix (The Friends of Paris-Roubaix), as The Athletic visits two days before the 2026 race tomorrow (Sunday).
The organisation is made up of volunteers, all of them working to safeguard its future — especially its kilometres upon kilometres of cobbles. Tadej Pogačar’s parents were due to visit later that evening, ahead of their son’s bid to make history.
Guy Mathon is the vice-president of Les Amis de Paris-RoubaixJacob Whitehead/The Athletic
“Our aim is to defend the race,” explains Mathon, LAPR’s vice-president. “‘Against what?’ Against the deterioration and disappearance of the cobbles. If there is no more pavé, there will be no more racing. You can visit some of the cobbles today and they will be fine. In three months, they will be wrecked.”
The cobbles bear years of history, not just from bike racing, but from life. When these tracks were originally dirt roads connecting farmers’ fields across a deeply working-class area of France, winter turned them into trenches of mud.
“The horse-and-carts would get bogged down and frozen in the paths. Business could not be done,” explains Mathon. “So the cobbles were introduced to make them passable — carrossable, we say in French. So these roads come from the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte, over two hundred years ago. It is a legacy from the past, heritage in motion.
“But now, trucks pass by. There are tractors. These are very heavy. And then there is the wear and tear of time, the water that infiltrates and weakens the surface. We have to monitor that and fix it — I believe that Paris-Roubaix must remain hard. But for me, it has to (also) be safe.”
So over cycling’s offseason, dozens of volunteers venture onto the farm tracks of this region near the France-Belgium border to monitor the condition of the cobbles — working through rain, hail, and occasionally sun, just as its agricultural workers have done for centuries. If a cobble is broken, it gets replaced with another that is in keeping with the surrounding rocks — there are four predominant types across the Roubaix route. This year, in the men’s race, there are over 50km of cobbled sectors.
“There is so much pavé that we don’t know how to fix it all at once,” says Mathon. “So we have to go by sections and priority.”
This is not a race on cobbles but a race ofcobbles; the two are so inseparable that the event’s winners are presented with one mounted on a plinth. In the next room to where Mathon is speaking to us, dozens of trophies line the shelves — including the 2020 prize, which was never awarded as the Covid-19 pandemic forced the race to be scrapped.
Who will lift this trophy on Sunday?Jacob Whitehead/The Athletic
But the power of this symbolism has led to issues. The great beauty of cycling is that its stadiums are the same roads on which we walk, drive, and even ride ourselves. A football fan will almost certainly never take a free kick at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro, while only the fortunate few amateur golfers may ever round Augusta’s Amen Corner. But anybody can access the cobbles of Paris-Roubaix — and some choose to take them home as a memento.
“This is an issue I first noticed four years ago,” says Mathon. “There were more and more missing cobblestones. I have two theories. The first is that it’s a theft by someone who is a little bit unaware and is taking a souvenir for home, like a collector’s item. Or maybe, and I hope it’s not this, but a kind of sabotage.
“Why am I saying this? I find it unusual and really very strange that on the Arenberg sector, which is 2.4km long, the cobbles are stolen from the middle of the sectors — the crown of the road, where the riders ride. If it’s a simple theft, then surely it’s a little bit (taken) from the right, a little bit from the left, a little bit in the middle, a little bit everywhere. But no, it’s really in a straight line, and that catches my attention. Why do they do it like that?”
That morning, he dispatched two volunteers to the Trouee d’Arenberg to fix these holes, the pair needing to employ a temporary solution with just 48 hours to go until the race — plugging them with a mix of sand and cement that will harden by Sunday. But, with the area packed with tourists ahead of the race, and no surveillance in the forest which lines it, Mathon worries that more thefts could occur.
“I hope it’s just people stealing a collector’s item for their home, and not sabotage,” he adds. “People don’t realise that when the riders’ carbon wheels hit a hole at 50kph (31mph), the wheel can explode or dismantle and cause a serious crash, or maybe even, given the impact, ruin a career, just because someone took a cobble.
“It scares me for the riders, and I hope it’s more stupidity than deliberate vandalism. We’re going to have to take action.”
Visiting Arenberg later in the day, the repair marks are still visible in the height of the midday sun.
This is Paris-Roubaix’s most famous sector, despite usually taking place over 100km from the finish at Roubaix’s velodrome. It was first discovered by Jean Stablinski, a longtime teammate of five-time Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil in the 1950s and 1960s who described himself as “the only rider to have ridden over and under it”, having worked as a youth in the coal mines that dominated this part of his homeland.
One of just three sections of pavé given a “five-star” difficulty rating — former LAPR president Francois Doulcier once said of it, “Objectively speaking, it’s the worst-maintained sector of cobbles in the whole race” — it’s liable to make riders shudder through both fear and the reverberations that come with passing over it.
“It’s the true definition of hell,” Italian rider Filippo Pozzato has said. “It’s very dangerous, especially in the first kilometre, when you enter it at over 60kph. It’s incredible. The bike goes in all directions. It’s a real spectacle, but I don’t know if it’s really necessary to put us through it.”
Some 10,000 fans will be here on race day; already, several amateurs are testing whether they can navigate its 2.4km length ahead of the amateur sportive on Saturday. Its danger is latent; 1996 winner Johan Museeuw shattered a kneecap here two years later, before returning to claim two more editions in the following four years.
So far, the section has not been introduced to the women’s race owing to safety fears over the potential size of the peloton when it passes through, with Arenberg being so close to the start (which is 10km away in Denain, rather than Paris; similarly, the men’s event actually begins in Compiegne, an hour’s drive north of the capital). A chicane was introduced in 2024 to slow the riders’ speed, located right next to a railway level crossing that competitors will hope does not sound on Sunday, after the events at last weekend’s Ronde van Vlaanderen.
Two teams whizz past on a reconnaissance ride — French squads TotalEnergies and Groupama-FDJ, grim-faced and focused in their lines.
A few remaining missing cobbles aside, the course is at its best — helped by an unusual flock of helpers. Around 40 goats have spent the previous two months here, nibbling away at the excess vegetation.
Goats are used to prepare the cobbles for cycling’s GOATsAnne-Christine Poujoulat/AFP via Getty Images
“During Covid, we realised that the grass in the Forest of Arenberg was growing back really quickly, so we said we needed to find solutions,” race organizer ASO’s course designer Thierry Gouvenou told Cycling Weekly.
“We tried sweeping, using fire to burn the grass away and trailing a giant brush behind a tractor. The problem with the brush is that it cleans too deeply, and the riders complained about it being dangerous, because their tires would go between the cobblestones. So why not eco-grazing?”
Organizers work with a charity, Espoir Avenir, which offers work experience to the region’s unemployed, with Pas-de-Calais suffering massively in the wake of deindustrialisation.
Roubaix, in particular, is one of the most deprived towns in France, with 46 per cent of the population living under the poverty line. Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix works with the local horticultural college in an attempt to help teach the younger generation vocational skills.
“They are very proud to see that the riders, on Sunday, will pass over their repairs,” explains Mathon. “This is a working-class area. Yes, it is a race, it is true, but it is above all a unifying event for us, a mobilising event. It’s about sharing what we see with our neighbor.
“Obviously, the race itself is very exciting, because despite the modernism of cycling right now, maybe it’s the only race in the world that retains the difficulties and characteristics of a century ago.
“No matter what, the riders, from the first to the last, will be heroes on Sunday night. And that’s what the public comes to see. It is the greeting of those heroes, of the people who will succeed in finishing, or maybe even winning, that is what matters.”
- May 5, 2010
- 53,220
- 31,450
- 28,180
Did he mean it figuratively "The race is a piece of s**t." Or literally "The 'mud' is actually a piece of s**t."
- Feb 24, 2015
- 905
- 920
- 12,180
Don’t know but clearly there is a trade off between puncture resistant and suppleness/speed.
I think teams will carefully consider this and the benefit of decreasing the risk of puncture, both from hitting cobbles faster (impact) and from not being able to take the best line (probability).
- Jul 31, 2024
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We have been over this before. You all believe what you will. I will believe what i will. And say roubaix proved my point.
San remo was one of the few races Pogacar still really wanted. No way he would have allowed his own chances to be diminished and allow the chasers back just cause Pidcock refused to work. You all want to believe Pogacar would hold his legs still as well if Pidcock does not come through. I very much disagree & Roubaix proves it. Now that he's won San remo the situation will be different next time around. But not in that moment. As Roubaix proved. He would have ridden and gone for a 1vs1 against Pidcock even if Pidcock had relayed far less. I do not doubt you & many others believe otherwise. As I was laughed out of the room for pointing this out. the fact that Pidcock did not have a teammate behind is irrelevant imo. What mattered was Pogacar desire to win San Remo. Going 1vs1 against Pidock was better odds for him than allowing the chasers back. But again, the way I see it, Roubaix proved my point. You all think what you will.
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how can one watch Gran Camino or Limburg, after a race like Sunday? it's like drinking Budweiser after La Chouffe or Leffe ahah
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