The Spring Classics - 2016

[tombeej]

Isn't PR this Sunday? As I was wondering how on earth am I going to manage church, the first round of the UCI DHI World Cup series and the ever beautiful and glorious Hell of the North?

 

Ja you're right - I knew that too but don't know how I just sommer added a week there !

 

So I've gone back and edited my post. My bad

[Mntboy]

Ja you're right - I knew that too but don't know how I just sommer added a week there !

 

So I've gone back and edited my post. My bad

You could always do a Zuma and blame your old math teacher.

[meathead]

Ja you're right - I knew that too but don't know how I just sommer added a week there !

 

So I've gone back and edited my post. My bad

 

You put me in a mild panic as I went to check

[tombeej]

“Don’t hunt around for other expressions; for the eighty years this race has existed, its chroniclers have used these words and these alone. By necessity. What words, you ask? Beauty, sadness, pain, courage, injustice.”

– Yves Berger, writing in 1982.

 

“These bloodied and battered warriors struggle through the rain, the cold, the mud, on roads better suited to oxen cart than bicycles. But for the victor there is glory, immortality and a place in history amongst the giants of the road.”

– John Tesh, broadcaster, describing the race for CBS’s coverage in 1987.

 

“I don’t believe that Paris-Roubaix is a race that any rider truly likes. There’s nothing enjoyable about it except the fact that it’s the world’s most famous one-day race.”

– Julian Dean, speaking to Rouleur magazine in 2006.

 

“I am made for this race. But does she want me?”

– Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, who raced Paris-Roubaix seventeen times in the 80s and 90s, winning twice.

 

“Paris-Roubaix starts like a party and ends as a bad dream.”

– Guy Lagorce, a journalist for l’Equipe.

 

“I’m the world cyclo cross champion, but if someone had suggested holding a race of that discipline on this route, I would have refused. At 27, I’m too young to die.”

– Roger De Vlaeminck ('Monsieur Paris-Roubaix'), after winning the race in 1974.

[tombeej]

“Paris-Roubaix is the last test of madness that the sport of cycling puts before its participants…. A hardship approaching the threshold of cruelty.”

– Jacques Goddet, former Race Director.

 

“Hell, these innumerable straight, laborious, tortured and gutted roads and paths spiked with glistening and slashing cobblestones, where one is astonished to see bicycles hurtling along, and where one doubts that a single racer will get through unscathed.”

– Yves Berger, writing again in 1982.

 

“You bump shoulders left and right. We’re all friends here, but all of a sudden, nothing matters any more. There’s no safe haven, it’s full-blown war out there… But I’ll return.”

– Pello Ruiz-Cabestany, a Spanish cyclist who fell 6 times during a 1 km stretch in 1983.

[tombeej]

Riders talking about the intense fighting for position that happens before each cobble sector....

 

 

“If you arrive in front on the first cobblestones, it’s as though you have won a stage. From then on, you have no more time to think about anything.”

– Walter Godefroot, the 1969 winner. 

 

“When the big boys hit the cobblestones, I never stopped telling myself, ‘You’ve got to let yourself go like a vagabond’, so I didn’t budge from my position.”

– Frédéric Guesdon, the last French winner of the race, in 1997.

 

“Before Arenberg it is like a bunch sprint in a major Tour. The favourites are… fighting for their place, even using a lead out train to get onto the cobbles first. It’s 70 km/h, then you hit the cobbles.”

– Former Quickstep rider Wouter Weylandt, who died during the 2011 Giro d’Italia.

 

“From the bone-jarring chaos that has consumed the last 5 minutes of your life, all of a sudden you emerge on to an asphalt road, non-descript and probably a very poor surface; after the forest it feels like a carpet made of the softest velvet and the silence is deafening.”

– British rider Roger Hammond.

[tombeej]

Paris-Roubaix: arguably the only race on the international calendar where just finishing is considered an achievement - and badge of honour - in itself.

 

“I don’t care. I proved to myself that I was a man, because I suffered, but I still finished. I finished.”

– Christian Raymond, after finishing 20 minutes behind champion Rik Van Looy in 1961.

 

“Someone – an official, no doubt – told me that I could stop there and be counted anyway. But I said to hell with that. I want to enter that velodrome no matter what, with my noisy derailleur and bike as out of whack as it was.”

– Jean-Pierre Danguillaume, on arriving an hour after the winner.

 

“Half of my men were lying on their backs and the other half were on their stomachs.”

– Cyrille Guimard, French former professional and directeur sportif.

 

“The super moment for me, the greatest of them all, was that last turn, when I entered the track… I had entered into the temple, and then all the people stood up in unison. They’d been waiting there for three hours, and now they finally got to see the winner in all his glory. I still get goose bumps when I think of the moment, as if I had been watching myself from the stands.”

– Marc Madiot, two-time winner and current directeur sportif at FDJ.

[tombeej]

The Famous Showers. 

 

A prized oddity in professional cycling, the Roubaix velodrome showers are as traditional to the race as the cobbles themselves. Plaques with the names of previous victors adorn each shower, a monument to the toughest men in the sport.

 

“You get into the velodrome and go into the showers, and De Vlaeminck, Merckx, Hinault—all these legends have been in there before you, and you’re scrubbing mud out of your ears. It’s all part of the adventure.”

– Stuart O’Grady, the first, and still only non-European winner of the race, speaking in 2007.

 

“In the showers we often discussed our misery… It was an apocalyptic vision, seeing all those wounded men who sit down but can’t get up. That steam everywhere. It’s extraordinary.”

– Jean-Pierre Danguillaume, a seven time stage winner at the Tour de France, again.

 

“Under the shower you hear the swearing. ‘This shitty race, I’ll never come back.’ But once they’ve left that room it becomes ‘Wow, what a race!’”

– Cyrille Guimard, French former professional and directeur sportif..

[tombeej]

For me, the images that capture the true essence of Paris-Roubaix and what 'The Hell Of The North' really means, are not muddy cobbles or the Arenberg forest.

 

It's the pictures of the riders in those famous old showers once all has been said and done.

 

The Paris-Roubaix thousand yard stare (what dark place are they lost in?)

 

 

[tombeej]

France, Roubaix, 12-04-1992.

 

 

Greg Lemond, completely exhausted sitting on a bench in the dressing room in Roubaix after his efforts to help his team mate Duclo-Lasalle to get the victory in this race.

 

[T-Bob]

One of my all time fav's: 

“It’s bollocks, this race! You’re working like an animal; you don’t have time to piss; you wet your pants. You’re riding in mud like this; you’re slipping. It’s a piece of ****.”
 

– Theo de Rooy after the 1985 edition of the race. Then asked whether he would ride it again, he replied:
 

“Sure, it’s the most beautiful race in the world!”

[pe3nguin]

Those showers stir up something visceral. Nice pics.

[T-Bob]

and...

"Let me tell you, though — there's a huge difference between the Tour of Flanders and Paris–Roubaix. They're not even close to the same. In one, the cobbles are used every day by the cars, and kept up, and stuff like that. The other one — it's completely different ... The best I could do would be to describe it like this — they plowed a dirt road, flew over it with a helicopter, and then just dropped a bunch of rocks out of the helicopter! That's Paris–Roubaix. It's that bad — it's ridiculous."

 

[Gen]

Good article. .yes I am still hung up on Flanders. .

 

http://velonews.competitor.com/2016/04/news/sagans-cobbles-reign-officially-begins-at-flanders_400936

[Gen]

With my Flanders hangover I forgot about the Pais Vasco

 

30.8km to go

 

Just tuned in to live steaming.

 

https://youtu.be/fHrczXWvqEE

[pe3nguin]

yes I am still hung up on Flanders. .

Who isn't? What a race!