Male Team 14 Apr
Paris-Roubaix
257 Kilometers
The 54.5 kilometers on ‘pavé’ -cobblestones not similar to other races’: rough, irregular, with significant gaps between each other- covered by every edition of Paris-Roubaix made this race impossible to compare to any other event in the calendar. It’s a competition which, contrary to almost everything you can find in ‘planet cycling’, doesn’t allow your body getting back to perfect condition until even Wednesday or Thursday following the race. The metaphor so many times used of kids and men being separared by the cobbles, as exaggerated and hurtful it might seem, is portrayed in no better way at the ‘Hell of the North’ than in any other place.
The 96-kilometer stretch towards the first of 2ç9 cobbled sections -Troisvilles à Inchy- is usually covered at high speed, with breakaways not building a massive gap. The first ten sectors are also relatively easy, even if long; it’s at the Trouée d’Arenberg (-94.5km) when the race really explodes, with lots of little groups then facing more difficult sections, harder with every kilometer passing, even more so if rain shows up.
The other ‘five-star’ pavé sectors are Mons-en-Pévèle (-48km), with its three long kilometers, and Carrefour de l’Arbre (-16.5km), the last place where you leave your rivals behind out of the conventional roads – and preceded by the also-dangerous Camphin-en-Pévèle (-19km). Only big names claim success at the Velodrome.