2024-04-07 14:57:58
Mathieu van der Poel flies over the scrum. After winning the Tour of Flanders, the Dutch rider won the Paris-Roubaix this Sunday, April 7. Thanks to a daring attack 60 kilometers from the finish, he tamed the Hell of the North for the second time in his career.
Published on: 04/07/2024 – 4:57 p.m. Modified on: 04/07/2024 – 5:17 p.m.
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Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin) won his second Paris-Roubaix solo on Sunday after a 60 km raid to achieve the double on the cobbled Monuments, a week after his victory at the Tour of Flanders. Flying over the cobbles thanks to diabolical dexterity, avoiding all the traps, the Dutchman raised his arms on the track of the Roubaix velodrome with a three-minute lead, an abysmal gap, over his Belgian teammate Jasper Philipsen and the Dane Mads Pedersen .
The world champion becomes the eleventh rider in history, the first since Fabian Cancellara in 2013, to accomplish this feat. He is now the only active runner to have six Monuments to his name, one more than Tadej Pogacar.
Read alsoCycling: the Paris-Roubaix peloton traumatized by falls
A week after his 44 km ride at the “Ronde” last Sunday, he won at the end of a new solitary raid, 60 km this time, exactly like Andreï Tchmil, exactly thirty years ago, putting an end to all the suspense. by accelerating in the paved sector of Orchies in the face of resigned competition. The grandson of Raymond Poulidor thus joins, at 29 years old, champions like Fabian Cancellara, Tom Boonen, Roger De Vlaeminck and Rik Van Looy to win the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix in the same year. A Herculean task reserved for the greatest.
Already a winner last year, van der Poel is also the first to triumph two years in a row on the cobbles of the Hell of the North after Tom Boonen in 2008 and 2009. It is finally a triumph for his Alpecin team which, unprecedented, won the first three Monuments of the year with also the success of Jasper Philipsen, well helped by Van der Poel, in March on Milan-Sanremo.
The Arenberg gap caused damage
The race, completed at record speed with a strong wind at our backs, settled very quickly with the peloton quickly split into small groups. This early selection made it possible to avoid massive falls in strategic sectors such as the controversial chicane before the Arenberg gap which the favorites negotiated within a small peloton of only around thirty riders.
But the gap caused damage and caused confusion after the puncture, on its exit, of several big guns, Jasper Philipsen and Mads Pedersen in the lead. The group of favorites, with no French except Hugo Page, was then reconstituted. Before witnessing, helplessly, van der Poel’s meteoric start on his way to glory.
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