Pogacar sets his sights on Paris-Roubaix, the last classic he still lacks
The Slovenian champion aims to complete his palmarès with this legendary race, while Mathieu Van der Poel seeks a fourth consecutive success
Once upon a time, before the reign of Tadej Pogacar began, Paris-Roubaix was a special race.
Where anything could happen. Falls, rain, wind, mud, punctures and many other unforeseen events made it absolutely unpredictable and unpredictable. Even more indecipherable than Milan-Sanremo.
It could have been won by a great champion, suited to this lottery of the stones, but it could also have been won by a generous nobody who, from that day on, would no longer be a nobody, because winning a Roubaix, also known as 'the last folly of modern cycling', is enough to enter the history of this sport and of this classic, beloved precisely because of its difficulty and because it represents, with its 30 cobbled sectors (54.8 km out of a total of 258.3), a reckless plunge into the past. In that Hell of the North, towards the Belgian border, so well depicted in the novels of Emile Zola, with its coal mines, its low houses with red bricks, certain bars with wooden counters where on Sundays, after mass, miners and peasants gather in their festive attire to get busy with cards and glasses. These bars have not changed much; they are almost always called 'Terminus' with notices on the walls warning patrons not to spit or get drunk. On spitting, let's say everyone agrees by now. On drunkenness, there is still work to be done.
That digression having been made, let us return to the crux of this Roubaix number 123: the point is that this year Tadej Pogacar, after San Remo and Flanders, absolutely wants to win it. Both because it is the only monumental classic that has so far escaped from his rich palmarès (5 Lombardia, 3 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, 3 Tour of Flanders, 1 Milano-Sanremo), and because, by winning Roubaix as well, he will have a downhill route to make it five in the same season (a feat not even achieved by Eddy Merckx), as Tadej now considers Liège and Lombardia to be his hunting grounds, which he has long since acquired.
In short: Pogacar, with his enormous talent, is about to dispel even the last myth of the Roubaix: that of its elusiveness. If he wins, as is very likely (although Van der Poel will do everything he can to prevent him from doing so), nothing will be precluded to him anymore. Even now, this record-breaking Phenomenon (111 successes, including 4 Tours, a Giro d'Italia, 2 world championships in a row) seems to be launched into a parallel universe of cycling.
