Paris-Roubaix Preview: Mathieu van der Poel Favored in Dangerous Race Amidst Peloton Trauma

The peloton is already “traumatized” by the serious falls which sent several cycling stars to the hospital, and here comes Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, one of the most dangerous races of the year. Mathieu van der Poel is the big favorite.

If there’s one race that’s scary, it’s the Hell of the North. Since its first edition in 1896, the Queen of Classics has broken men and their machines on its six million often dislocated cobblestones, to the point of being today the only event of the year where the teams leave the choice to their riders to participate or not.

This is even more true this year, with paved areas saturated with water and stained with mud after a particularly wet winter. Even though hot, dry and windy weather is forecast, the course still looked like a real ice rink on Friday, conducive to a new festival of slips and punctures.

Falls are the current theme in cycling and the fear went up a notch on Thursday, during the terrible crash at the Tour of the Basque Country which notably sent Jonas Vingegaard and Remco Evenepoel to the ground, both victims of fractures and injuries. a pneumothorax for the first, who, 3 months before the Tour de France, are forced to pause their season for long weeks.

The accident, preceded by the equally serious one of Wout Van Aert, 10 days ago during Across Flanders, puts the dangerousness and crazy speeds of this sport back at the heart of the debate.

For a sixth Monument

The peloton is “damn traumatized”, according to the director of Paris-Roubaix, Thierry Gouvenou, to whom the riders’ unions asked for a way to slow down the riders at the entrance to the formidable Arenberg gap, to avoid a new game bowling.

After numerous discussions with the authorities, it was decided that the riders would go around an island just before, a sort of improvised chicane which is not without posing other safety problems, it is so tight.

“Is this a joke?”, reacted Van der Poel, who said that entering the Arenberg gap at more than 60 km/h does not seem to scare him, nor does much else. Outgoing winner, the Dutchman is the big favorite to achieve the double in Roubaix, a week after his demonstration in the Tour of Flanders.

Certainly, the Queen of the classics is not easily available. No rider has won the 2 cobbled Monuments in the same year since Fabian Cancellara in 2013. And we have to go back to 2009 and Tom Boonen to find trace of an outgoing winner who keeps his property in Roubaix. But Van der Poel has excellent reasons to believe it because his power, his agility and his superiority are precisely reminiscent of those expressed at the time by Cancellara and Boonen with whom he began to play in the same league.

The Swiss and the Belgian, respectively three and four times winners of Paris-Roubaix, have won 7 Monuments in their career.

Laporte back

Van der Poel can come within a length of these two cobblestone giants on Sunday. And overtake Tadej Pogacar to become the only active runner to have 6 in his bag, at only 29 years old.

If the world champion, who spent the week training in the sun in Spain, is such a favorite, it is also because the competition arrives, like at the Tour of Flanders, in his little shoes.

In addition to Wout Van Aert, absent for many weeks, uncertainty surrounds the state of form of Mads Pedersen who is also still licking his wounds after the Tour of Flanders. Same thing for the Visma-Lease a bike team which records the return of Christophe Laporte, but will be without Van Aert and Matteo Jorgenson.

Van der Poel’s most serious competitor could ultimately be his teammate at Alpecin, Jasper Philipsen, 2nd last year and winner of Milan-Sanremo a month ago.

If one of the two wins, Alpecin will become the first team in more than half a century to win the first 3 Monuments of the year, a nice snub to the behemoths Visma, UAE or Ineos which have a much more budget. chubby.

Afterwards, there remains the randomness of a race like no other, 260 km full of traps where it is not always the strongest who wins and where you also need a good dose of luck to avoid punctures and obviously falls. .

>> Also read:: Jonas Vingegaard also affected in the lungs

agencies/tai

2024-04-05 14:19:01
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