Consummate teammates who rarely race for themselves, they usually do their work before the finale of a race on the run ins to the early, decisive sectors. When a classic is about to hit the cobbles, or turn into the crosswind, we can count on them to be at the front, ready to pull until they can no longer turn their legs. At this year’s Paris-Roubaix, they will have more freedom. Before Tom and Owain race the final cobbled classic of the spring, we sat down with them to ask what it’s like to race Roubaix.

Owain

I think I must have been 14 or 15, and Luke Rowe’s dad organized a week trip just riding cobbles, culminating in watching the professional race. I guess it must have been 2008 or 2007 or something like that. And that was my first experience of rocking up. We had no special equipment, just a normal road bike, and went out and smashed 50 or 60 kilometers of cobbles. Then, obviously you do the junior race and under 23 and then the pro race, but that was my first experience of it.

Tom

I’m a bit different in that my first experience of the Roubaix cobbles was the under 23 race in 2012 with the development team. We did a few recons, and during the recons we all lifted our stems by 5mm with a spacer under the stem, so our handlebars were immediately higher. We had 32-spoke wheels, some big, heavy—I think they might have been 27mm tires with super low pressures, which I had never really experienced before. It was all new for me, and I ended up having a really nice day on the race day. I was a bit green in terms of knowing what I was actually doing, but I must have been strong enough. Bob Jungels was two minutes up the road or something. And then we had me and one teammate, against two teammates from the Quickstep development team. I followed Yves Lampaert. He and I came into the velodrome after Jungels, and he dusted me in the sprint.

Owain

There is the well known phrase that they are like baby’s heads, or kinderkopjes in Dutch. It sounds like an extreme quote, and I don’t know who came up with it, but it is pretty accurate to be honest. They are not like what you have in Belgium, or what you picture in a town center in the UK, like brick klinkers or anything like that. They are literally like baby’s heads. There are gaps in between them, and some sections are better than others, Arenberg being the worst. The thing is, the faster you go the easier they feel and you don’t notice them so much, but then as soon as you are out of the race or out the wheels or you blow up, then you feel every single cobble. Before then, you do have the impression, especially with the equipment nowadays that you are floating across them, but once the lights go out you feel every jolt.

Tom

Once you lose that momentum, you feel every one, how rough they are and how big the gaps are in between them. It’s not a flat surface. Sometimes there is a ridge in the middle. Sometimes you have to deal with potholes or the earth beneath them has sunk down a little bit. You think you are doing okay, but there might be a hole with one or two cobbles missing and you slam your rim into that and get a flat tire. They are just brutal things to bike across.

Owain

Roubaix is probably one of the only races where you actually have to really make calculations on the line you are taking versus trying to avoid having a puncture.

Tom

You have to choose which hole you can hit and which hole you can’t hit, basically.

Tom

You want to have a lot of trust in the wheel that you are following into the cobbles, knowing that 90% of the time the guys are pretty good. You have got to trust that guy in front of you and stay calm because if you move off that racing line in the middle halfway through a sector or think the right hand side might be the better side to take and decide to try to pass this guy, the risk you take of something going wrong and riding into where the holes might be just to advance one place in front of you, that is where things start to go wrong for every body. Stay calm and relaxed when you file into there and just follow the wheel in front of you and there are probably less chances of things going wrong, but you still have to race eh.

Owain

I would agree, but going into Arenberg is one of the most nuts, scary things you can do in professional cycling. It is essentially a bunch sprint at 60 or 70 kilometers an hour into the roughest sector of cobbles and it is one of those times where you just have to take your brain out. As soon as you start overthinking, that is actually when you put yourself in more danger. You just have to commit. As soon as you start thinking, you start hesitating, and you go backwards. Some of those sections, especially when the bunch is still fairly grouped together are mad, literally mad.

Tom

Obviously, the better positioned you are in the peloton entering those cobbled sectors, the less that can go wrong, and will go wrong. That is why you have the fight to get into each sector in a good spot. Depending on the wind conditions, you don’t totally want to be on the front, but you want to be in the top ten, safe out of the wind and out of trouble.

Tom

Quite often, it’s just guys having mechanicals. Most people probably have a story of something going wrong and how they dealt with it at the time. It is often a long time before the team cars come back to be able to get you some support or change your bike or fix your bike.

Owain

Going into the first sectors, there are still 180 guys, so there is a way, way high chance of multiple things going wrong, and you can get caught behind a crash in the first section and the stress builds and you are passing guys on the floor, guys getting bike changes, a car stopped in the middle of the cobbles, trying to do service. Especially in the early sectors, when the race is on, it is just chaos. It is hard to explain. I think last year was quite a good example. The fact that the bunch had split right before the first sector and you had 70 guys chasing 70 guys, and then you hit the first sector, and then maybe the second or the third sector there was a big crash on a wet section of cobbles, guys clambering over ditches trying to get around crashes. It is just chaos.

Owain

I think the goal for us will be to have as many guys getting through Arenberg as possible and then taking the situation on from there and trying to get ahead of the race.

Tom

We’ll have more freedom, instead of one big leader that we’re going to support.

Owain

The early break in Roubaix is probably one of the best breaks that you can be in. You do yourself a massive favor there. If you look at it historically, winners have come from the early break, or been in the top ten or on the podium, so it is a credible tactic. If you go in the break in some of the classics, like E3 or the early, early break in Flanders, the chances of you hanging on to actually get a result are less, but obviously with the nature of Roubaix, it is a more viable option, so for sure that might be a possibility. It is just weighing up how much you are going to spend on it, because you could spend a lot of your pennies at the start and get nothing back from it. A lot of teams will be thinking a similar thing which then makes it harder to get in the break, which maybe means there might not be a breakaway before the first section of cobbles. Roubaix is a race where you have to be really flexible and just adapt as best you can to the race situation and the scenario that presents itself.

Tom

It is not very often that you find yourself in this situation, where you get that freedom to take on a big race like this. I have put a lot of energy into it over the years of learning how to ride Roubaix and the training that you need to do for it. When the opportunity comes around it is a good one to have.

Owain

I agree. I think it is the best Monument that you can do in terms of having a free role. Although it is a brutal race, there is a lot that can go on with it and you get situations where you can have quite an unexpected top ten. It’s not often where you get that in Sanremo or Liège or Lombardy, because of the nature of those courses, but if you are in the right place and you start in front, once the favorites catch you, in a way it can be quite difficult to get rid of guys, because the race is completely flat essentially. Obviously sitting on someone’s wheel at 500 watts is never easy, but it is easier doing it on a flat piece of road than it is doing it on a 12 percent climb.

Owain

Roubaix is the Monument where anything can happen. Whether you have a good day, a bad day, everyone who gets to that velodrome is happy. To finish on that velodrome is probably the closest you can get to finishing the Tour on the Champs Elysées. Whether you have done 15 Roubaix or it is your first one, everyone’s first goal of the day is to get to that velodrome, to get from Compiègne to Roubaix and be able to ride onto that track. Making it there is a proud achievement. You might have a really great day, with no problems and you do a really great race, or you might crash three times and have two bike changes, four punctures, and knowing that you managed to make it to that velodrome, you get a lot of satisfaction from that. And it is the last race of the cobble season. Everyone builds their cobble season when they start their off season, and they are already planning—I want to be good in the classics, I’m going to do this, this and this, and that starts with Opening Weekend, and then you do Paris-Nice or Tirreno and then you do the block of the classics, and Roubaix, for the majority of guys there, is the last race of the first part of the season, so there is a different feeling to it. After Roubaix, most guys are having a break. You’re done and there’s that relief I guess, and you let off the pressure and you can breathe again.

Tom

You get to that velodrome and you can finally close the book on the 2023 classics. And then you’ve got another 12 months to get another shot. That’s what it’s all about these one-day races. You’ve got to hit it on the day. That’s what makes them so special.