FINISHED THIRD IN 2004 AND NOW WORKS ON THE RACE AS A TEAM MANAGER
Roubaix in 2004 was one of those moments that was fairly life changing for me. I remember that day vividly. Riding for a smaller team had its challenges, but I’m a firm believer that Roubaix is one direction, and there’s a lot less that can go on than in Flanders, for example. It’s one of those races where you make your own luck. In the 10 years I did it, I only got one puncture. My team-mates got me out of a lot of trouble, because it was a day that I was really nervous, and didn’t realise how much until I found out I’d forgotten my food at the beginning, so without any team-mates that would have been the end of my race. Although they finished a long way behind - I think my first team-mate finished after I did the podium ceremony - they did the job they needed to do.
When you’re in that front group, getting closer to the finish, it’s amazing, with the noise, the atmosphere and the excitement, and it’s hard not to get carried away with it. Coming into the velodrome I could hear other people changing gears, really localised noises. The only thing I could hear outside of that was the flapping of the flags, which was really bizarre. So many thousands of people there. You’ve got your plan, and you’re just so focused on executing it at that point in the race. I knew I’d be tired when I got there, with low sugar in your brain and a high heart rate. You’re not going to make the right decisions, so you have a predetermined plan. I absolutely loved the race. You don’t do Roubaix because you’re paid to, you do Roubaix because you love it. Otherwise nobody would go there. I never thought that I shouldn’t do Roubaix just in case I injure myself for Romandie, so
I loved it, I obsessed about it, I loved how you had to pay attention to your equipment.
There was a flow to the racing, it was a monument, so you were riding a familiar race to Merckx, De Vlaeminck, all of the greats. I was always dreaming of a wet Roubaix because then my skills could come to the fore, but sadly you can’t choose the weather.
I wish every single rider would get into the car and do a Roubaix like that, they should be obliged to before they criticise a DS again. I take every opportunity to apologise to every DS I had in the past.
Roubaix is an old industrial city, and like any it faces challenges. Unemployment is quite high and life isn’t always easy here. Through the 20th century, its wealth came from the wool industry and it had one of the biggest wool factories in Europe in the 1950s but it shrunk through the 1960s and 1970s and it has closed now. Roubaix reinvented itself, and La Redoute, the mail order company, was the biggest employer, but the city is in transition now to a service economy. But while it’s one of the poorest cities in France, the name is known everywhere and the race exports the name everywhere.
People may not know about the city, but they know the name of the race. For the people of the Nord region, the race is special. Life here has been about working in mines, then factories, and life has been hard. Paris-Roubaix represents that difficulty a little, and though the mines and factories have closed, the collective memory of the people still appreciates the effort of the riders.
Paris-Roubaix itself is such a hard race and it has an aura.
It is unique, and I think it should stay unique. It’s been around over a hundred years, so it has a long history, and that has allowed it to resist progress, while the great champions have all won it. You just have to look at the winners’ list - Merckx, De Vlaeminck, Coppi, Bobet, Maes, Pélissier - to understand that it’s an important race. Without that depth of winners, maybe the race would have disappeared or sunk down to the lower categories like Paris-Brussels.
If I have an image of the race it is of Franco Ballerini, who was a friend of mine and who won it two times. There’s a picture of him which we put on the cover of one of my books, with him, the dust, the crowds and the cars following. For me, the archetypal Roubaix riders are him and Francesco Moser - they were motivated mainly just by that race; they lived for it.
The race allows us to understand how much harder things were in the past, but at the same time, the race is much harder than it was in the 1950s, for example. They used bigger roads, and the riders could ride alongside the cobbles on the pavements. It was only when those roads were improved and they started using the farm tracks that it got very hard. The strongest and best Roubaix riders come to the fore on these tracks - they ride through the centre of the track, to avoid going to the edge and getting a puncture, buit it takes great power and technique to ride at speed there. Roubaix is a specialists’ race - you have to have skill, and be very very strong to win.