Feel The Race: Touching Roubaix

You wait a whole season for it (who wouldn’t want to race a Paris Roubaix?), but as soon as it starts, you already want them to let you go and get it over with as soon as possible.

Paris-Roubaix is the hands on the handlebars beaten and pummelled cobble after cobble. The harder you grip the more lethal the blows. Those who have won Paris-Roubaix tell us that in order to win it, you have to relax and follow the bike without holding it too tightly. You have to let it go, you have to feel it.

Paris-Roubaix is hands slapped on the barriers and placards to cheer the riders, almost to the point of pain.

For some Paris-Roubaix is the cobbles that pound your body after a fall in one of the sectors. Or worse the tangle of bikes, wheels and components that land on you if you fall in the pack.

It’s the strip of smooth ground that gives you some respite from the cobbles. A place of safety that is seeked out with a tremendous balancing act.

When you get used to it you race Paris-Roubaix without gloves, like Tom Boonen, to feel everything that the pavé has to throw at you. Because at a certain point the cobbles become an old friend that you only see once a year. A slightly violent and cantankerous friend, but always a great friend.   

This year’s Paris-Roubaix was like a sucker punch. So dry and fast that the realisation of what happened only came after the finishing line.  

Paris-Roubaix is a land of fields. There can either be thick mud or fine dust that sticks everywhere. It’s finishing with a face covered in wet earth, with the mud that starts to dry and pull your skin. Or it’s the dust that sticks everywhere and clogs your mouth. Drinking from the water bottle at Paris-Roubaix has little to do with taste.

This year’s Paris-Roubaix is more than dust that sticks everywhere. It’s sand and fine earth that covers the riders and heaven help anyone dropped amongst the cars. The same earth covers the bare-chested fans draped in flags, who don’t care about coming home filthy. They’re happy to have seen a show like today. 

Paris-Roubaix is the warm reception of the fans. Nobody really cares whether there is the warm sun of spring or incessant rain. It can either be the heat of an impromptu fire or the ice cold wind on the faces of riders and fans.

It’s the feeling of the smooth cement of the velodrome under the wheels, after a day spent being pummelled by the cobbles and potholes. It’s the water on your face in the most famous showers in cycling. For a few, the strongest and luckiest of the day, it’s the warmth of the podium. For just one, the strongest and luckiest of them all, it’s the feeling of lifting a heavy stone up in the sky with your hands, to consecrate the perfect day.

Paris-Roubaix is Dylan Van Baarle’s hands on his face and the warm embrace just after the finishing line. An embrace that releases the tension and expectation of a team that despite having won everything, still hadn’t gotten its hands on cycling’s most important stone.