Cycling can be a cruel sport – flying one minute, lying face down on the tarmac or cobbles the next. And Paris-Roubaix can be the most cruel of all – just ask Stijn Vandenbergh (Omega Pharma-Quickstep) after a collision with a spectator cost him in 2013, or BMC Racing who saw all their hard work undone when Greg van Avermaet took a spectacular tumble this time out. Magnus Backstedt told RCUK the run-in to the pavé is as fearsome as the cobbles itself, but the bone-shaking pavè is what makes the race famous.
And you do not have to have crashed to have suffered – Team Giant-Shimano tweeted the below photo of Nikias Arndt’s hands post-race.
So #ParisRoubaix takes it out of your arms, legs body and … hands as Nikias Arndt shows us here! Ouch! pic.twitter.com/iPWPoqaYkH
— Team Giant-Shimano (@tgiantshimano) April 13, 2014
And yet, Paris-Roubaix as a spectacle remains one of the finest on the pro cycling calendar. So chapeau to the cobblestone road builders, those who maintain them and to the 199 riders who rolled out for the start of yesterday’s race – and especially to the 134 who finished, Great Britain’s Geraint Thomas, Sir Bradley Wiggins, Luke Rowe, Jonny McEvoy and David Millar among them.
