PARIS ROUBAIX
Fire & fury at the Hell of the North
Date: Sunday 11 April (men’s and women’s races) Start: Compiègne (men) and Denain (women) Finish: Roubaix Length: TBC 2019 winner: Philippe Gilbert (Deceuninck–Quick-Step) Website: paris-roubaix.fr
For the first time since 1942 when WW2 intervened, Paris-Roubaix was cancelled in 2020, after the second wave of Covid-19 hit and scuppered its rescheduled October date. Hopefully it’ll be back with a bang for the 2021 edition, which will see its first-ever women’s race, meaning all the spring Monuments will now stage one, bar Milan-San Remo. If the race sticks to the route originally scheduled last October, riders will race over 116km from Denain to Roubaix, with 29.2km of cobbles - even if it skips the notorious Forest of Arenberg. At 2.3km and typically around 100km from the finish, this is the gnarly icon of the men’s race. It’s too far out to be decisive, but its arrival means it’s business time.
What marks Paris-Roubaix out is its uniqueness. Almost pan-flat, with over 50km of it on archaic, rutted cobbled roads, it’s a course for the true specialist. Modern bike technology, with clever suspension built into frames and wider, more puncture-resistant tyres, has arguably smoothed off some of its edges, but with less unpredictability you can better guarantee that the strongest, shrewdest riders prevail. That said, technological innovation has been at the forefront of Paris-Roubaix throughout its history. Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle won in 1992 and 1993 with a RockShox suspension fork, while Johan Museeuw rode a soft-tail Bianchi in 1994 (to somewhat lesser acclaim).
Success – and lots of failure – abounded as riders and teams tinkered. No doubt the various forms of technology used today – carbon fibre frame manipulation, novel road bike suspension – will seem quaint in another 30 years, but what it does show is the lengths teams will go to conquer this savage one-off of a race.
The unique and universally loved ‘Hell of the North’ returns and adds a women’s race for the first time in history