Don't forget that Lars Boom won that stage, and by a decent margin. He was good on the cobbles at the time, but certainly not top tier and had Sep Vanmarcke working with him until he punctured. Meanwhile Sagan and Cancellara were marking each other out of the race and the other specialists were looking after team leads.I think when they do it like that it’s usually the minor classics, like GW, E3 and Dwars, rather than the monuments.
Id love to see Fuglsang ride Roubaix, after all when Nibali dropped all the cobble experts on the pavé in 2014, he did it on Jakob’s wheel.
I really would like to see GT riders at Roubaix more, but wasn’t Wiggins the first TdF winner in 20 years or so to even take the start line in 2014?
That situation really only came about because Nibali handled the muddy cobbles better than any of the other GC contenders,