Josh Tarling’s Paris-Roubaix frustration appears set to continue, with the British youngster feeling he’s lacking the form needed to truly compete in today’s race.
The 22-year-old time trial star dreams of winning the Hell of the North but was disqualified for a sticky bottle in 2024 and suffered an energy flat in 2025, revealing he’d been sick and struggling to eat in the week of the race.
This Spring, he had a strong showing at Paris-Nice, where Ineos Grenadiers won the team time trial, but he has not had any real impact in the Classics so far and comes into Roubaix on the back of a DNF at the Tour of Flanders.
“This block’s been a bit shit for me, I’ve not been going that well,” Tarling told Cyclingnews ahead of Paris-Roubaix.
Asked what was missing, he said: “Just my top end. I don’t know whether it’s the run-in or something. I feel dead fit but just slow. It’s something to work on for next year.
“I’ve got a good 10-minute big threshold from Paris-Nice, but my big 2-3 minute burst is not good enough at the minute,” he added.
Paris-Roubaix is a less explosive race than the preceding Classics, usually favouring the time trialling engines like Tarling and, indeed, his teammate Filippo Ganna, who starts as one of the favourites.
“I hope that’s the case. Of course, there’ll be points where it blows up, and I have to go full, but towards the end, the last two hours is threshold isn’t it?” Tarling said.
“Pippo is the full leader,” he added. “It’s a tailwind, so it’ll be a nice fast start, and the main thing will be positioning for the early sectors – they’re a lot closer together now. Then we need to be in a good position for Arenberg, and the final starts there. I’ll have a bit of a free role but Pippo is the leader.”
Tarling is far from laying down tools – “so much can happen in this race, so late on as well. We don’t stop, we just keep fighting to the finish." However, there was a slight air of pessimism ahead of a race he clearly feels is within his grasp one day.
“I’d say it’s my favourite race, so it needs to come,” he said. “I’m not sure it’ll be this year but we’ll sort it out.”
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