by Peter Sagan
Patxi and I then decided that electronic gears were not going to be necessary. With the ludicrous pavé of Paris-Roubaix constantly smashing at your bike from below, there is always a chance that a connection somewhere could get jiggled out of place and you lose your gears. Also, it’s not like Flanders where gear choice is superimportant for bergs like the Koppenberg or the Muur. Really, if it came to it, you could ride Roubaix on a single speed if you had to.
Finally, we were racing. The tweets of chiffchaffs filled the air, blackbirds warbled, the first swallows of spring skimmed the low grass in the fields. Spectators wearing casquettes to protect cropped heads from the sun carried huge Eskys of cold beers between them towards the remote secteurs of pavé like Jack and Jill on their way up the hill. A lot more Jacks than Jills, too, it has to be said. The Belgians and Dutch singing impenetrable folk songs, the French blasting grimy Parisian rap from barely portable sound systems and the Anglos trying to blend in. Wet, it was not. Yes, there were some residual puddles, some that had no doubt been in situ since about October, but it wasn’t anything like the #prayforrain gang had hoped for.
My number was 111, which felt good, as the special new skinsuit that Sportful had been developing for me was called the Bomber 111, and now it had that same number pinned to it. They called it 111 to reference each of my World Titles, but it’s also the number of the Heinkel bomber that caused so much devastation during the Second World War. I hoped to make it through to the outskirts of Lille without getting caught by angry Spitfires.
The early forays in Roubaix aren’t quite the same as in other big races, as you still get the frenzied start with a lot of people and teams keen to be involved in the break, but it doesn’t calm down afterwards. The knowledge that the first real pavé sections begin around Troisvilles after about 100 kilometres means that the race is always going to be fast, whether a break has gone or not. You really can’t expect to be held up by a crash or a big split at Troisvilles and still win the race, so it’s a supremely hard and tactical couple of hours when your teammates are precious. Five guys did manage to get clear but the pace was still nervously high behind them, even though there was no great need to reel them in.
The last 10 kilometres up to the Troisvilles secteur is like the last 10 kilometres of a first week Tour de France stage. Quick-Step, Sky, BMC, FDJ, BORA - hansgrohe … we’re all smashing the pace at the front and it’s line-astern all the way back from the first man to last.
Then it’s on at last. Slightly downhill, the huge camber of the track leads in the unwary off the crest and into hellish troughs on either side. ‘Relax, relax, relax,’ is my mantra, when every logical atom of your being is screaming at you to do exactly the opposite: don’t relax. Tense up. Panic. Stop. Do something!
Dust clouds thicken the air and shorten the field of vision. It’s best to have a clear view, but if you’ve got a clear view you’re either on the front of the race or you’ve been dropped. Everybody else just has to get on with it. We try to remember our recon rides but it’s impossible to visualise each little trench or hole with any accuracy. With the cobbles smashing at your bike, you force your eyeline up and away from the cobble that your tyre is about to hit and try to keep it fixed on the middle distance and bring some semblance of technique and normality. The S-Works Roubaix has dampening in the front end, which hardly turns this into a plush sedan chair ride, but does at least convince you that you may be able to retain your eyeballs within their sockets. This is the first section, sure, but there’s the knowledge that this will be a huge hurdle crossed if you can make it through unscathed.
All sorts of noise from behind and there’s clearly been a crash. A big one by the sounds of it. It’s hard to hear much on the radio in these moments, but it looks like we’re OK as a team. The first thing I hear of consequence is that Greg Van Avermaet is delayed.
Have you ever sat in a jacuzzi on full gas when the bubbles stop and it all settles down? God, I love that moment. That is the moment when you leave a pavé secteur and regain tarmac. It feels like an all-encompassing calm. The horizon goes from a lie detector graph going crazy to a thick, smooth swish of the Sharpie in an instant. But there’s another one coming.
Quick-Step are all on the front now. This is their chance to take the game away from BMC. You can’t win Roubaix here, but you can lose it in a blink.
This is great for BORA - hansgrohe. I feel OK. Burghardt is cruising, as is Body, as is Oss. We’ll have some matches to burn in this race for sure. Right now we’re lucky that it’s Quick-Step and BMC burning theirs up in a head-to-head and we’re tucked in keeping ours dry.
By the time we hit St Python – I’d love to read his biography one day, I think whenever I pass the village sign on a recce ride, but always forget – Tony Martin is showing the value of having a powerful horse on your team by dragging the whole race along on his own. There are more crashes, already plenty of abandons, and reports of ambulances and injuries behind us. We have a BORA - hansgrohe headcount and push on. GVA finally makes contact after a really hard chase neither he nor his team will have enjoyed, but I know from my own experience that sometimes that fury can stoke your fire for later in the race rather than sap your strength.
People often talk of the Forest of Arenberg as the hardest section of all, but also say that it’s too far from the finish to make a huge difference to the winner. I don’t really agree with either reading to be honest: it’s different and ludicrously difficult, but it comes, as Secteur 19, after half a dozen wickedly exhausting secteurs that are each quite capable of ending your race at any moment. So the idea of it being calmly strategic disappears immediately. And if you do manage to make a proper split in Arenberg, the second half of the Trench is so hard and long that it’s a fantastic opportunity to hole your opponents below the waterline, especially with more long and sapping sections following soon after.
Two Mitchelton-Scott riders prove my point by having their race ended in the most painful style shortly before we swing below those huge mine workings that guard the entrance to the forest. Coming here on the recce rides last week reminded me of just what a weird place this is. On any other day, the long flat grove of trees is silent apart from patchy birdsong. It is a proper Hansel and Gretel type of enchanted forest – definitely Brothers Grimm and not Bambi – where the chance of seeing a ghost flitting between trees seems almost likely. The story goes that the great Jean Stablinski, formed of the grit and coal that he and his emigré family had worked with their bare hands to become one of the greatest Classic riders of all time, recommended this strange and secret pathway through the trees to the organisers. He had chipped out tunnels below it and ridden his bike above it, like Stranger Things.
But today, the crowd is roaring, the hot dogs are sizzling and the sun is shining. Marcus Burghardt leads us on to the opening cobbles, spiking up to meet us like broken girders growing through the earth, me in third wheel, all of us going faster than bicycles ought to be able to go in such inhospitable terrain. This is it. The race. Come on, Marcus. This is it.
Fifty of us left in the front. Paris–Roubaix is the classic shakedown, bike racing as it was intended.
The five-man break is still away, but Burghardt’s massive effort has given me that rare delight of choosing my own path through Arenberg. The crazy speed of the first third is quickly replaced by the horrific drag of the second third, but I can see my long, straight route ahead. The tunnel of noise that has seen this little bit of France likened to a flat Alpe d’Huez in the past has been strangely transformed by only allowing spectators on the right-hand side. Here they scream, eyes popping, just inches from our right ears, while to the left is the lonely desolation of straight tree trunks, where you dare not let your eye stray, lest you lose your concentration and be pitched out of the saddle teeth first, or maybe catch sight of a long-dead relative urging you on.
Daniel Oss is with me, and Philip Gilbert is going like a train as we fight out of the forest and on to the road. There’s about
90 kilometres left and this is definitely Fast Phil territory. As his former teammate, Daniel knows this well and we watch him closely, though watching and neutralising are hardly the same thing in this race. Gilbert and Teunissen from Sunweb steal 20 seconds from us, and it’s down to BORA - hansgrohe and BMC to do something about it, hopefully before we hit the next volley of pavé. Teamwork makes less difference on the cobbles, and the variables stack up alarmingly.
There are a bunch of secteurs around the foot of a charming cooling tower set in the middle of nowhere that anybody who has ridden these mad roads will remember. The race is arranged in such a way that you feel that you can never leave the power station behind. Time after time you pass it, you look up a few minutes later, and there it is in front of you again. That day with Alberto chasing Nibali in the Tour de France, Oleg’s advice to ‘Fuck’em all!’ ringing in my ears comes back to me. Gilbert’s still up the road. I’m flying, on fantastic form, but we’ve been here before. One hundred stories. And as Zanatta said, I will never win Paris–Roubaix because I’m too hard on the bike.
Who got that deal of signing Daniel Oss over the line? Give him a bonus. The piston-limbed Italian and I were teammates as youngsters at Cannondale, and now we’re back together. He pays back a year’s worth of salary by catching Gilbert for the team, for me, for the rest of the race. Well played, Daniel. Seventy kilometres between us and the velodrome.
The front of the race splinters and re-forms a bewildering number of times over the coming sections. A bike commentator used to other races has no chance. It’s twos and threes from front to back, with people jumping forward and sliding back between them constantly. Imagine a horse race like this! It’d be more like a stampede or a cavalry attack than a race. Stybar, Naesen, Vanmarcke, Degenkolb, Rowe, Stannard, Stuyven, Terpstra, Greg, Gilbert, Martin are all here, plus me, Daniel and Marcus flying the BORA - hansgrohe flag … and still three members of the original break hang on a few seconds in front of us. This is the race, right here. Tony Martin attacks and is caught. Daniel attacks and is caught. Niki Terpstra attacks and is caught. Greg launches a really hard one that stretches everybody out … and is caught. Now it will calm down. I drift through to the front as Greg drifts back along the line, watching his chasers as they watch him. I take five metres. Ten. Twenty metres. Then I give it everything I have.
As ever in Roubaix, we’re taking multiple 90-degree bends through a little hamlet otherwise untroubled by the twentieth century, let alone the twenty-first. The corners as we leave the village allow me to glance back. Marcus rolls gently on the front. Greg, recovering from his effort, sits on his wheel. Behind him, everyone else sits and looks at each other. What are they waiting for? I ask myself. Me to chase myself so they can follow, probably. Suckers.
After five minutes of concerted riding I catch the three guys that have been away all day. Fair play to them. We’ve got 50 kilometres to go, so they’ve been out here for the best part of 200 on their own. I’m not really that familiar with them: there’s the Swiss champ Silvan Dillier who I know is no mug, Sven Erik Bystrøm and a strong Flemish guy from Lotto called Jelle Wallays. To expect a great deal of support from these guys would be unreasonable considering what they’ve already achieved today. I decide to work as hard as I can, treating it like a lone attack, and accepting some respite from them when they’re able. That means a welcome injection of energy that they weren’t expecting, so they all dig deep to linger at the front of the action for a little longer.
Bystrøm is cooked from his effort and falls away as the pace rises, but the three of us are all going OK. When I caught them, we were about 20 seconds off the front of the bunch. Now, despite these two guys being out here since virtually first thing this morning, they stay with me through the horribly screwed up long section of utterly useless cobbles at Mons-en-Pévèle and we eke the gap out to 48 seconds. It’s now 4.15 in the afternoon. There are 45 kilometres between us and the famous old velodrome. That’s about an hour. Come on, Peter. This is your shot.
I can hear on the radio that the race is splintered behind. Nobody wants to get together to chase, but even if they did it’s hard work at Roubaix where the constant thrust of cobbles and changes of direction make it too much of a free for all. Apart from Quick-Step, it didn’t appear to me before I’d attacked that there were any other teams with significant numbers either, BORA - hansgrohe being one of the strongest, and now we had Marcus and Daniel able to ride on the other teams’ leaders in the hope of being fresh if I were to be caught. AG2R and Lotto also stood to make podium positions at least with my breakaway partners, and who could say what would happen to me in this last hour? They could be sprinting for famous victories. All that helped weigh down their own teams’ willingness to join the chase.
We came off the next section of cobbles and I could immediately feel something was wrong. I looked down. Shit. My stem and handlebars were pointing north-west and my bike was going north. They were out by about 30 degrees. If they’re stuck there and won’t budge, then I can factor that in and deal with it. But that’s unlikely. What’s likely is my stem bolt has shaken loose and the whole assembly has swung left. Come the next secteur, they could do a complete 180 and I’ll be somersaulting over them into Napoleonic road and my own ignominious defeat. Shit shit shit. Team car? Forget it. This road is about two metres wide and there are 30 battered cyclists in groups of ones and twos between me and the steering wheel Ján Valach is behind. Neutral service? By the time I stop, get a spare bike with the right pedals and adjust the saddle, Ján will have gone by, let alone, Greg, Terpstra, Gilbert and anybody else whose bike still works.
Shit shit shit. I can’t let anyone know. If word gets back to the chasers, it’ll be all the boost they need. If these two realise, they’ll either drop me or give up. Neither looks good. But I won’t be able to chase, to corner, to stand up, to sprint … what to do?
I wonder how loose it is. Maybe I can nudge it straight? Impossible with no way of holding the wheel straight though: I give the handlebar a smack and everything just jogs. Pointless. Wait … what if I could wedge my wheel up against something? As we pedal through and off, after my turn, Dillier comes through to lead and I drift back to Wallays’ wheel. I let my front tyre ride close so it actually overlaps his back wheel on his left. Now, if I were to touch his wheel unexpectedly in this situation, I would almost certainly crash and he would be fortunate not to. But planning it? That would be different, right? A quick sharp tap, straighten the bars up, and off we go like nothing had ever happened. Right?
‘Godverdomme!’ yells the Lotto guy in the most useful time-honoured swear word in the Flemish cycling bible.
‘Oh, sorry, sorry, lost it for a moment, sorry,’ I apologise.
He shrugs. It happens. I’m the World Champion, I must have at least a vague notion of what I’m doing, worse things happen every minute of every race.
It didn’t work. I tap through again to the front. We really are going to be on cobbles again soon. This can’t be how I lose Paris–Roubaix. What about all that shit about making your own luck? All those tyre pressure conversations? Lomba writing me off?
I know what I did wrong. I didn’t tap him hard enough, obviously. Two or three quick hard blows. That’ll do it. Neither of us fell off last time, I obviously didn’t give it enough welly.
I sidle up behind his Ridley again. Deep breath, Peter. This is it. One … two …
Bang! Bang! Bang!
‘What the fuck, Sagan? What are you fucking doing?’
‘Oh man, sorry, just tired, sorry, it’s OK.’
There’s no friendly shrug this time, just a stream of under-his-breath invective and total confusion. Poor guy; 200 kilometres at the front of the world’s biggest one-day bike race and now some idiot is pranking him. This is a man at the end of his tether.
Worse than that, it didn’t work. Shall I get off? Twist it straight? Ask the other two if they happen to be carrying Allen keys and try not to get a Lotto-mitted punch in the fa
ce?
At that very moment my guardian angels appeared alongside me in the BORA - hansgrohe Ford. I could have leaned in and kissed them. The lengthy tarmac stretch had enabled Ján Valach and Enrico Poitchke to rally-drive past the chasers and get up to the front.
‘Going good, Peter. Need a drink, some food?’ enquired Ján.
‘Got a four-millimetre Allen key, Ján?’
Everyone loves a four. It’s the one you get free with Ikea furniture. A minute later and we were back in the game.
Half an hour remaining. Seven cobble sections to go. Greg and Terpstra are slowly closing. Time to burn some more matches. I tear through the Cysoing section and our lead holds at 50 seconds, but not for Wallays, who can’t go with this pace. Poor guy. Humiliated, teased and dropped. I will apologise.
Dillier is riding amazingly well. I keep expecting him to sit on, but he keeps on coming through and giving me little turns. The best thing about this guy is that he thinks he can win this. And the worst thing about this guy is he thinks he can win this. Do not underestimate this man, Peto. He’s on a special day.
I heard somewhere once that Sean Kelly blew what most thought would be the first of many Tour of Flanders wins by confidently leading out the sprint from the small group he had shaped, prepared his victory salute only to see Adrie Van der Poel’s lanky Dutch nose peek round him and snatch a great win. Kelly’s lesson? ‘It doesn’t matter how good a day you’re on, always remember there might be somebody else on just as good a day who is cleverer than you.’ Unbelievably for the most quintessential ‘Flemish’ rider, that was as close as he got to winning that race. I couldn’t let Sylvain Dillier be my Adrie van der Poel.