Who will be the queen of “the queen of classics”?
116.4 kilometers
For the first time, Paris-Roubaix will have its women’s event on Saturday, during which the Dutch, Annemiek van Vleuten and Marianne Vos in the lead, will want to forget their failures at the Olympics and recent Worlds. 116.4 kilometers and 17 paved sectors: the female elite will discover the Hell of the North.
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A platoon of 132 units will take the start of this great first at Denain, with 29.2 kilometers of cobblestones. This represents more than a quarter of the route, identical to that of the men over the last 85 kilometers.
They will start with the four-star sector leading from Hornaing to Wandignies, 3.7 km long. Like the men, victory could be played in the strategic cobbled sectors of Mons-en-Pévèle and Carrefour de l’Arbre.
Recent world champion, the Italian Elisa Balsamo (Valcar) will show off her iridescent jersey for the first time.
She will have a hard time facing the favorites, most specialists in cyclo-cross like the Belgian Lotte Kopecky and especially the Dutch Ellen van Dijk, Chantal Blaak, Annemiek van Vleuten and Marianne Vos, but not Anna van der Breggen, who took her retired last week after the world championships.
Vos, three-time world champion on the road, was above all a seven-time world champion in cyclo-cross. This is to say if the mud and the rough roads do not scare him. At 34, the star of the Jumbo-Visma training is delighted for his sport. In the peloton for fifteen years, she is well placed to analyze the evolution of her discipline among women.
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“Professionalisation and media coverage”
“What has changed in fifteen years? I would answer with two words: professionalization and media coverage,” she explained recently to AFP. “When I started, we were only a handful of professionals. Today, we are in the majority. And, most of the major races being televised, that gives us real visibility,” she added. “There is also more density. It becomes more and more difficult to win a race. A victory today is much more valuable than when I started.”
A success on Saturday at Roubaix would therefore have a special flavor for the one who has already won Gand-Wevelgem and the Amstel Gold Race this year, failing to second place in the world championships last weekend.
Her compatriot Chantal Blaak, winner of the Strade Bianche 2021 and the Tour of Flanders in 2020, will also have assets to highlight. “I’m super excited but on the other hand it’s also a little scary because it’s a very hard race, you can’t compare it with anything else,” she said.
Silver medalist in the online race of the Olympic Games last summer, she will be revenge like the Dutch stars, big favorites of the Olympics and the Worlds but who each time had to be content with runners-up.
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Audrey Cordon-Ragot: “I have the template for that”
On the French side, the chances of success will rest mainly on Audrey Cordon-Ragot. “I have the size for that, between the light and the heavy! For the technique, you have to know how to sit for a long time and you need a complete relaxation of the body. I think I am more of a Flandrian”, she judges. “What will also matter is the technique of placing before tackling the cobblestones, and I think my experience will help me, this is an area in which I have learned a lot.”
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