Paris-Roubaix is the greatest single-day spectacle in the road cycling calendar – and the sport desperately needs more races like it if it wants to grow and increase fan engagement.
Wout van Aert won the fastest-ever edition of the famed cobbled classic last weekend, out-sprinting road cycling’s current superstar, Tadej Pogačar, in the historic Roubaix velodrome.
Although more than 258km long, there’s rarely a dull moment in a race such as Paris-Roubaix.
Whether it’s the cobbled sectors, the run-ins to them, or riders attacking, being dropped, suffering mechanicals, fighting back from adversity, and so on, there’s always something happening – or the anticipation that something could happen at any moment.
It’s obvious, but the brutal cobbled roads of Paris-Roubaix are what deliver this constant action and tension – and, subsequently, such massively increased fan engagement.
They pose physical, tactical and technical challenges to the riders and teams in ways that most road races run on regular tarmac roads simply can’t, and turn Paris-Roubaix into a ‘must watch’ event every year.
In contrast, too many of road cycling’s countless pro races fail to consistently generate anything close to this kind of spectacle.
I’m not arguing we should have a carbon copy of Paris-Roubaix every weekend, but if the sport is to grow, there are lessons to be learned from how it manages to generate such enormous interest.
Why technical challenges matter in road racing
While there are plenty of fantastic races in the UCI’s WorldTour calendar, it’s also fair to say a lot of what’s being televised on any given day can often be somewhat forgettable – at least outside of the ‘main events’, such as the monument classics, the Grand Tours and so on, where the sport’s biggest names turn up to do battle.
That’s a problem for pro cycling, because if the racing is boring fewer people will tune in (especially now it’s so expensive to do so, at least here in the UK), and in turn that means less return on investment for brands sponsoring teams and races.
Of course, the riders are human, and it’s hard to manufacture exciting racing – especially because, tactically speaking, it generally pays not to attack too early in road races that last for hundreds of kilometres.
The main lesson other races can learn from Paris-Roubaix, though, is that a parcours that poses technical as well as physical and tactical challenges can help massively, because riders are forced to react to it.
The unique demands of the cobbled roads mean riders and teams must consider carefully their bike setups and tactics in order to maximise their chances of success.
In contrast, most ‘standard’ road races simply see riders aboard their ‘standard’ team bikes, with the same wheels, tyres, tyre pressures and so on as they’d use for any other race, and there’s more scope for the strongest teams to control the racing through brute force.
It’s all fairly predictable, outside of a few mavericks pushing the limits more regularly.
Punctures and mechanicals can and do happen in any race, of course, but with modern road bikes being so good, such incidents are generally far less frequent than in more technically demanding races (and, with riders tacitly enabled by the sport’s governing body to use team support cars to chase back on to the bunch following mechanicals, they’re rarely decisive).
In contrast, every edition of Paris-Roubaix generates huge amounts of interest in simply seeing the different technical strategies riders and teams employ, and how these choices ultimately affect the racing.
This year, for example, saw Pogačar aboard a 38mm-wide front tyre and briefly riding a Shimano neutral service bike.
Mathieu van der Poel’s chances of winning were scuppered following punctures in the Arenberg trench, and some trouble with prototype pedals on his teammate’s bike.
Red Bull - Bora - hansgrohe brought back a tubular hack from the good old days – coating the sidewalls of its Specialized Cotton TLR tyres with liquid urethane.
Lidl-Trek opted for Odyssey Optis inflatable tyre liners, and both Team Total Energies and Ineos Grenadiers opted for mountain bike and gravel components.
It’s a veritable feast for any cycling fan who cares about bike tech – and, in my experience, that’s an enormous proportion of the most dedicated fans.
What about the primacy of man over machine?
As many commenters like to point out, it’s always the rider that wins a bike race, not the bike itself.
Cycling isn’t Formula 1, and a rider with ‘the best bike’ won’t automatically be competitive by simple virtue of that fact, because the differences between pro racing machines are, for the most part, relatively small.
Nevertheless, as much as the UCI might not like it, cycling is a technical sport.
Until all the riders have equal equipment (which won’t happen, because it would kill the sport’s commercial model), there will always be something to gain or lose via equipment choices.
The demands of races such as Paris-Roubaix magnify those gains and losses to a much greater extent than ‘standard’ road races, though.
Given this, race organisers should be bolder, follow the lead of races such as Paris-Roubaix and more actively seek out race courses that pose a greater technical challenge to riders and teams.
We’ve seen this pay off hugely for RCS Sport and Strade Bianche, which takes in the white gravel roads of Tuscany.
Despite being only 20 years old, it’s already considered to be among the most prestigious and exciting to watch on the calendar – precisely because it offers a different challenge and spectacle from other races.
Not every region is lucky enough to have a ready-made network of stunning white gravel roads to call upon, of course.
But in my experience, there’s nearly always ‘something’ interesting in most areas of the world, whether it’s cobbled or gravel roads, narrow farm tracks, tough climbs, technical descents or something else.
Here in the UK, for example, we have the Rutland-Melton CiCLE Classic, which purposefully takes in the narrow farm roads and short, sharp climbs that characterise so much of cycling in England.
With road conditions in the UK at an all-time low, perhaps it's time we simply learned to embrace it rather than always pining for ‘good’ roads.
It’s time to let go of tradition
So much of road cycling is governed by tradition and the way things have always been done, but if Paris–Tours, one of the oldest bike races in the world (its first edition was run in 1896), can change its route to include gravel sectors and punchy climbs in the finale, any race can.
Although it’s fair to say organising bike races is a mammoth task, that requires infinite patience and ability to wrangle permission from local authorities, I simply don’t see what many races have to lose by trying to make their parcours more interesting.
If they don’t get it right the first time, they can always amend things for following editions.
The popularity of Paris-Roubaix shows the level of interest that exists for the sport, though, and if we don’t try to evolve things, I fear cycling will continue to fail to capture such big audiences on a regular basis.
