In good news for sports broadcasters, this Sunday marks a rare day in the cycling season which is unlikely to see a dramatic fall-off in views somewhere between 50 and 100km from the finish line. Because this is Paris-Roubaix – and rather than dropping all his rivals and casually soloing away to victory as normal, with exhausted observers switching off in the face of the inevitable, here Tadej Pogacar has a real fight on his hands.
Perhaps saying that out loud will guarantee another romp to victory for the 21st-century Cannibal. But Paris-Roubaix is now the only Monument – one of cycling’s five most prestigious one-day Classics – the double world champion and five-time Grand Tour winner is yet to win, and it remains the toughest race on his calendar.
Last Sunday he won a record-equalling third Tour of Flanders title, putting him clear in second on the list of all-time Monument winners with 12, behind only the legendary Eddy Merckx. It continued his habit of mercilessly rewriting the history books, as he became the first rider to win four Monuments in a row. He has gone for the quality not quantity approach to this year, and has won every race he has competed in so far: Strade Bianche, Milan-San Remo, and now the Tour of Flanders.
Victory in Roubaix would make him the first man in five decades, and only the fourth ever, to win all five of cycling’s premier one-day races, and the first non-Belgian (the others are Merckx and another two legendary names, Rik Van Looy and Roger De Vlaeminck). He would be only the 12th rider to complete the Flanders-Roubaix cobbled double in the same year.
As ever with Pogacar, while it seems that while there is little he has left to win, there is plenty more history to write.
Those are the statistics. But cycling is not purely about statistics, and even a man of preternatural ability such as Pogacar can come unstuck. Especially in Paris-Roubaix.
The race commonly known as the ‘Hell of the North’ has acquired that name for a reason. It is a different beast: 258km through northern France, just under 55km of it over bone-rattling pavé. To call the terrain ‘cobbled’ is to rather under-sell it: great slabs of rock, often of uneven shape and height, and deep, rutted tracks represent innumerable pitfalls for the rider suffering a momentary lapse of concentration. Positioning, endurance, and pure brute force are crucial. So is luck, and that is one thing Pogacar cannot guarantee he’ll have.
Last year UAE Team Emirates-XRG management made clear their disapproval of the marauding Slovenian putting his tilt at a fourth Tour de France title in jeopardy in order to ride the treacherous cobbles of Roubaix. Pleas for him to avoid the risk fell, inevitably, on deaf ears.
Pogacar finishing second on his debut was arguably the worst possible result for them; if he had won, perhaps he wouldn’t be so tempted to put himself through Hell another time. But coming second, undone by a crash onto the grassy roadside with less than 40km to go? That guaranteed he would be back. So here he is.
But luckily for the neutral, this race is not on Pogacar’s terrain. Such is his ludicrous quality he remains one of the biggest contenders anyway – but not the outright favourite, which makes the hefty cobblestone trophy even more of a prize. The flatter parcours compared to the hilly Tour of Flanders, its cobbled cousin, changes the game. There are fewer places for the Slovenian to drop his rivals – and more for them to outgun him.
And the physique that makes the 27-year-old unbeatable on any sort of uphill gradient – the lean, mean, fighting machine – is not so suited to the particularly brutal, bone-jangling cobbles of northern France. His toughest opposition all dwarf him by comparison: Mathieu van der Poel is 75kg and 6’0”, Wout van Aert 78kg and 6’3”, with Pogacar a comparatively petite and slight presence at 5’9” and 66kg.
Then there’s the other elements that make up a successful Hell of the North campaign: bike handling, positioning, avoiding punctures and crashes and even the tiniest dip in concentration on the gruelling terrain. Pogacar is no slouch, but Van der Poel is the undisputed master, aided by his own history-rewriting brilliance on the cyclocross bike, having won an eighth world title over the winter.
The favourite is, as always in Roubaix, Van der Poel, winner of the last three editions in a row, a rider so well-suited to the race he could have been designed for it, and in fine form after finishing second in Flanders.
Between them Pogacar and Van der Poel have won the last ten Monuments between them. The most recent other winner was the Dutchman’s teammate Jasper Philipsen, a versatile sprinter who won Milan-San Remo in 2024 and has been second twice in Roubaix, and represents a Plan B for Alpecin-Premier Tech better than most teams’ Plan A. Van Aert and Danish talent Mads Pedersen round out the top-tier challengers, with both having made two appearances on the podium, with Ineos Grenadiers’ Filippo Ganna another vast engine and strong contender.
Even if Pogacar’s team makes the race tough from the gun, and the Slovenian somehow manages to drop them, that is a formidable line-up of opposition – and there is plenty of flatter ground on which they can hunt him down. It has worked before: Remco Evenepoel and Matthias Skjelmose managed to claw back Pogacar at Amstel Gold last year, to his evident displeasure. The result? Skjelmose won a memorable sprint finish.
Pogacar’s dominance in every other race he enters, and the fact he finally claimed Milan-San Remo this year after years of trying, means it is impossible to discount him. But his rivals should be cheered by the fact that his victories have been less convincing than this time last year.
That may sound delusionally hopeful for a closer race – but it is borne out by the results, and Paris-Roubaix is vastly different to the races he has won this season. While he romped away on the Tuscan gravel of Strade Bianche he only edged Tom Pidcock – since laid low by crashing down a ravine in Catalunya – by half a wheel in Milan-San Remo, and his casting aside of Van der Poel in Flanders was by no means as comprehensive as it was last year.
He may hold a psychological advantage over his rivals – Oliver Naesen of Decathlon CMA CGM said this week that he “takes away all hope” – but Paris-Roubaix has the capacity to humble anyone.
If Pogacar wins on Sunday it will be down to his sheer force of mind as much as anything else, his unbreakable drive to write yet more history, to add yet more to his own mythology. The Tour de France is boring to him now; Paris-Roubaix is the only race he has yet to bend to his will. To cement his own legend he must win the Hell of the North – and if he cracks it on Sunday, even the most exhausted observer would be hard-pressed to look away.
