Paris-Roubaix

[Frankly]

Mathew Van der Poll certainly made the field look silly. But all of his real competition were burned out not by the sheer speed of the first half with a 25 km tailwind, but because they weren't used to spinning that fast for that long. Van der Poll sat on for the entire first half and for the next quarter was in a large breakaway that had the same problem. So when Mathew did a solo up the road no one could keep up with him. And at that point I guess the roads were mostly cross winds because when they showed a close up of his cassette he was in the 13 and I don't think that he shifted at all for his entire breakaway since he was taking the turns so wide that he was worrying even Bob Roll who did his share of Hell of the North.

He set another course record, but barely and this was entirely from the speed of the first half where the average speed was nearly 60 kph (37 mph).

With all of the crashes disabling most of the other fast riders in the races leading up to the Paris-Roubaix it would have been a different story had not all of the real competition been disabled.