Paris-Roubaix: tyre widths, cobbles and victory for Wout

Months before, I paid my entry fee and signed up. I knew little of the famous race,

save as one of the classics. In pictures, a strung-out peloton is either covered in

mud in the wet or emerging from clouds of dust if it is dry. Usually, there is also

blood. It is known as the “Hell of the North”. In large part, because of the cobbles.

And not the sort of cobbles one knows from back home.

Preparations had gone as well as they could. Talk amongst the group obsessed

over tyre width, gravel machines, pressures, tapes of various kinds, special sorts of

gloves, and a story of a man whose teeth had been vibrated out of his head in a

prior edition.

With just weeks to go, I realised that my 2015 Cube Agree and its 23mms would be

no good. No good at all. I needed a new machine and 35mms, minimum. The

man in the shop said that anything less than that was negligence and tried hard to

get me onto 40mms, but I held my ground. What then followed was an ill-advised

and entirely unrestrained shopping spree, buying an “all road” bike and the latest

kit of all kinds in a completely manic way, all of it eye wateringly expensive. Hard to

explain. Each item purchased fed into a realisation that I was lacking in some other

area of equipment and generated an unrelenting thirst to buy again.

When we hit those cobbles - Trouée d'Arenberg was first up - I was wholly

unprepared and thought of nothing but the folly of buying brand new carbon only

to throw it into conditions bound to end up in a puncture, broken frame, or

worse. Indeed, one of our group immediately crashed into a Dutchman and the

latter was left with perhaps a broken collarbone, although kept his humour. Another

in the group lost a contact lens and carried on half blind. But the man who had

arrived on 47mms and a gravel machine cruised along like he was driving a tractor.

He alone seemed satisfied with his work.

We had been in a group up to then, and going fast on smooth Tarmac in early

morning air. And before that we had been at the start in Roubaix. And before that

in the apartment the night before drawing straws as to who had a bed to themselves

and who must share with another. The width of those double beds was not enough

but I was fortunate to have pulled a lucky straw and slept alone. In the morning

there were eggs and half a coffee for a few of us. Some were not in the mood for

eggs.

The start went off in waves from a Roubaix traffic light. Not many had left by the

time we got to the front, but there were enough for us to chase and there was a

growing peloton to gobble up. Some spoke of a wild Frenchman taking suicidal

turns on the front before peeling off to recover whilst lambasting those that had

their teeth in the wind to go faster. A chain of perhaps 40 riders swept out behind

this spectacle. The displays of bravado had ensured that we hit the trench at good

speed, but some said afterwards that the French conductor was immediately spat

out the back. Either way, we never saw him again.

It turns out there is only one way to tackle the cobbles: as fast as you possibly can

and zigzagging wildly between fleeting smoother sections in the middle and lines

through the slim gutters that flanked the stones, desperately scanning for hidden

holes and bumps. This approach requires a considerable dollop of bravery. And

then slowing down was a terrible business as one simply could not get back up to

speed in any sensible way. Cornering was terrifying and the usual technique put

one at risk of carrying straight on into ploughed fields or worse.

Throughout, punctured riders and their dismantled equipment flanked the route,

some walking slowly on, heads bowed - those were best ignored and the images

wished away. Extreme vibration was now the name of the game.

We broke into teams of three - if one broke down, the other two would wait and

assist. After each of the 18 cobblestoned sections, we waited briefly to see who

might have been taken down, entering each gauntlet with the fear that this could be

it, this could be the one, what fresh hell was next. We simply could not know. By

some miracle it never came and of the 20 riders not a single spare inner tube was

called upon.

At the end, every man for himself by then, there was of course the Velodrome. Each

rider said the same thing: an astonishing thing to have gone through.

The next day, giddy with pride and delight at our own luck the day before, we

toured the outskirts waiting for and then sprinting in search of the passing by of the

professional racers, their speeding over those same cobbles in the blink of an eye;

look closely now or you will miss them.

They do things well in northern France. It is possible to explain yourself there in a

way that is much harder back home. Suddenly, cycling around with a group of

friends new and old seems to answer a few questions.

I wondered if Pogačar thought the same thing the next day. He had pulled Wout

van Aert for dozens of kilometres ahead of a bunch not able to keep pace, and yet

he had been done at the last by the Dutchman. A finish for the ages. By then, we

were by a big screen adjoining those narrow lanes through farming country where

weary pods of riders rolled by hoping to beat the cut off.

Thinking back, I had signed up thinking of all the ways the trip could go wrong and

all the problems one might need to solve, but in the end, it turned out that the only

thing I needed to do was to keep going.