Another Sunday In Hell: The brutal race that thwarts the greats
The 30 sectors of cobbles along the ancient route got the better of the Slovenian for the second time on Sunday, when he was beaten by Belgian Wout van Aert in a sprint in the race's legendary velodrome finish. "I'd describe the cobbles, not like a market place in a village as you might think, but more like someone decided to drop a load of cobbles and see where they landed, and somehow they are described as roads," Lizzie Deignan, who left blood on the handlebars of her bike when winning the inaugural women's edition in 2021, says. "Think of hardest physical exertion you've ever done on a bike, and then being rattled at the same time to the point even the muscles in your fingers are so sore.
It's a bit like holding on to a pneumatic drill whilst going as fast as you can on a bike. " More Than the Score podcast: Paris-Roubaix: cycling’s ‘hell of the north’ Van Aert beats Pogacar in thrilling Paris-Roubaix sprint A dedicated group of volunteers spend the year leading up to the race maintaining the cobbles to try to keep the course safe, while ensuring the unique profile remains. Preparation of the route has included the use of goats to chew away the vegetation which makes its way through the stones - especially on the fearsome sector through the Forest of Arenberg, a foreboding sprint over pave which is always treacherous, often slippery, and forever fraught.
The weather also never helps: if it rains it is a near-impossible quagmire, with countless abandonments; if it is dry, the dust will get you, kicked up by competitors and the cavalcade of team cars and motorbike outriders - it's a challenge to breathe, let alone see. On her day of glory, Deignan surprised the rest of the peloton and broke away in torrential conditions which saw her, at one point, riding the bike sideways as the rear wheel slid out on a corner. "Everybody punctures and everybody crashes, it's whoever has good legs and survives it really," she says.
"It's unlike any other race. " Paris-Roubaix falls into the same road cycling World Tour as that of the Tour de France, or Giro d'Italia. And so the same peloton will be hurtling along the cobbles a couple of months before gliding through the sunflowers of a French summer.
But success in those other races does not always translate to joy on the pave. Four-time Tour winner Chris Froome: hated it, rode it once and didn't finish. Three-time Tour champion Greg Lemond: managed fourth.