by Lionel Birnie
Twenty-five years ago, the pre-race talk was about Arenberg and how to make the most feared section of cobblestones on the Paris-Roubaix route safer – or at least less dangerous. The previous spring, Johan Museeuw – one of the best Classics riders in the world – had suffered a terrible crash there and shattered his kneecap. Shortly afterwards, gangrene set in and he almost had to have his left leg amputated.
There was no social media then but there was still a feeling that the Arenberg section was just too dangerous when approached from the traditional direction. There’s a clear run at it, slightly downhill, and with a tailwind the riders could easily reach the sort of speed more common during a sprint finish. The transition from smooth road to cobblestones was sudden and brutal and the dark, canopied section meant that even on a dry day the stones could be wet and perilous.
The race organisers decided to tweak the course, sending the riders round the houses, literally, and through the Tranchée d’Arenberg in the opposite direction. This would reduce the speed of the riders as they approached and therefore reduce, but not eliminate, the danger without lessening the difficulty of the race’s first five-star section of cobbles.
The spring of 1999 was a dark time for professional cycling. The heavy clouds of the previous summer’s Festina scandal had not cleared. Instead there was a storm of police investigations and court cases, blood tests and random searches. That’s not to say the safety of the riders was not on the agenda, but there was undeniably a prevailing impression that cycling was a borderline criminal operation. The subtext was that risk and danger were everywhere. Every time a rider used a banned substance or injected blood there was a potentially bad outcome around the corner.
Bear in mind, too, that in 1999, helmets were not mandatory and that many chose to tackle Arenberg and the other cobbled sections with only a cloth cap on their head or, as in the case of that year’s winner Andrea Tafi, a cloth cap with the top cut off, and in some cases nothing at all. As I say, they were different times.
I was at Arenberg that day in 1999 and it was spectacular and terrifying and there were still crashes but no one came close to losing a leg. Since then, they’ve switched the route back to the original approach and this week, after consultation with the riders’ union, an artificial U-bend has been inserted to slow the riders before they hit the Arenberg cobbles.
Is it the perfect solution? Probably not. Is everyone happy? Also no. After all, the danger may merely be displaced. Riders may crash as they fight for position before they reach the U-bend. Or they might crash going round the bend itself. But just because it’s not the perfect solution doesn’t mean it’s not preferable. Unfortunately, the risks at Paris-Roubaix are high, no matter what mitigating steps the organisers take. The only way to make Arenberg totally safe is to avoid it altogether.
The terrible crash on the descent at Itzulia in the Basque Country this week was a stark reminder that professional cycling events take place on public roads, not in a sealed environment, with all the imperfections that entails. There are bumps, patches, badly-repaired bits of road, awkward cambers, awkward bends, and the roadsides are dotted with bollards, gullies, storm drains, rocks, trees and sheer drops. That’s not to absolve race organisers or the UCI of all responsibility, far from it. It is their responsibility to ensure the course is as safe as possible and the teams and riders are aware of any unusual dangers. After all, the bikes are faster than ever, the stakes higher. Therefore it is the sport’s responsibility to ensure the riders are not asked, induced, or pushed, to take excessive risks. What is certain is that a slower entry speed at Arenberg will not lessen the drama or spectacle, it may even introduce a new tactical dimension to one of the key points of the race, and it may make it a bit safer.
As if to illustrate that 1999 was a different time, I travelled over to France with a colleague from the magazine I worked for at the time and only when we got off the ferry in Calais did we realise that neither of us had booked a hotel for the night. It was quite an oversight because this was long before you could book a hotel with a couple of touches on a smartphone. In fact, I think it was before I even had a mobile phone, or if I did have one I certainly didn’t have one that would work abroad.
Anyway, we were young and carefree and we set off for Compiègne confident things would work out. We went to the team presentation, which was held in a little theatre rather than in front of the town’s grandly imposing buildings, then we went in search of a couple of rooms for the night.
We found a guesthouse that was dark, dingy and unwelcoming but it had two rooms and it was cheap so we dumped our bags and went to meet another colleague, an Australian called Gordon, and his partner, who were watching the race as fans before heading to Paris and an onward flight to somewhere in the Far East for a holiday. We ate steak-frites in a little bistro that offered us a great view of the evening’s floodlit amateur nocturne race. We then ended up in a smoky nightclub with low ceilings and some dubious clientele before heading back to our digs. The bedbugs were so bad I gave up after about 10 minutes and slept on the floor. It was grim.
Next day we picked up my colleague and his partner, put their rucksacks in the boot and together we went to Arenberg, then another sector, and then up to Roubaix for the finish where we agreed to meet them after the race so they could get their bags before heading to Paris.
Well, after the race we emerged from the press room and headed back to the car only to find that windows had been smashed on almost all of the ones parked in the street where we’d left our car. Roubaix was apparently the car crime capital of France. Whether that was true or not, Paris-Roubaix offered the local hoodlums easy pickings that day.
Astonishingly, our car was untouched so we decided to get on the road quickly. We were almost at Calais when I suddenly realised we still had our colleague’s bags – including their passports and all their holiday clothes. Our relief that our car had not been done over was such that we’d skedaddled rather than waiting for them.
We couldn’t call them – no mobile phones in the olden days, you see – so there was nothing we could do until next morning. When I got into the office there was a post-it note on my desk asking me to call the Australian embassy in Paris, which I did. If my memory serves me rightly, all was not lost because Gordon and his partner were issued emergency passports once I’d faxed through copies of the original documents. All they had to do was buy a complete wardrobe of holiday clothes and toiletries and almost nothing was ruined! Every time I am near the Roubaix velodrome that memory comes back to me and my cheeks flush slightly red.
I’m not going to bore everyone with my long-winded stories of riding the Velo Club de Roubaix sportive in 2008 – all 260 kilometres of it. There’s no doubt it was one of the most eventful, most difficult and most rewarding days I’ve ever had on a bike. I remember the feeling of elation when I survived Arenberg – it really is bloody horrible to ride – and the sense of over-confidence that gave me. After all, there’s still 100 kilometres to go from that point. I’ve written about that ride before and it remains one of the things I’ve enjoyed most in retrospect. At one point on the cobbles, both my contact lenses fell out because they’d dried out, and I pressed on regardless to the end of the section because I found not being able to see actually made the experience a bit less terrifying. At the final feed stop, my riding companion James joined the queue for the toilet while I sat and ate a plateful of delicious salty salami – a wonderful relief after a day fuelling on sugary stuff. He must’ve been in the toilet a while because when he came back I was fast asleep in an uncomfortable plastic chair. As I came to, I refused to believe we still had the best part of an hour left to ride.
Anyway, I promised I wouldn’t go on so I’ll leave that for now but every time I return to Paris-Roubaix memories of that ride come flooding back.
And, of course, although I didn’t know it at the time, the 2021 edition – the one held in October because of the pandemic – was the last race I covered with Richard Moore.
Simon Gill, David Luxton and I travelled over with our bikes. We stayed at Le Grand-Duc, a delightful, hidden gem of a guesthouse in Valenciennes, and we went for a ride on the Friday morning. We did a couple of sections of cobbles, we laughed and joked and we attacked each other on the bike path on the way back to Valenciennes until I sat up and let Richard get on with it, watching as he rode off into the distance thinking we were clinging to his wheel.
We covered the women’s race on the Saturday – the first edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes – and we recorded out in the wild as the riders experienced the Hell of the North cobbles for the first time. On the Sunday
You may have read this before, because I wrote about it the following April, as we returned to podcasting a few weeks after Richard had died.
‘Over the weekend, I kept replaying a moment from last year’s Paris-Roubaix in my head. Richard and I were standing outside the Stablinski velodrome, the modern indoor arena across the road from its more famous grandfather, recording some last links for the episode. I made a joke about Florian Vermeersch, the young Lotto-Soudal rider who’d finished second while still studying at university. Vermeersch was also active in local politics and had been elected a town councillor and so I nicknamed him The Mayor and was feeling quite pleased with myself.
‘Then we got distracted by two late middle-aged gentlemen standing slightly too close and staring intently at us. It knocked both of us off our stride and we stumbled over our words and lost our concentration.
‘Richard explained to them that we were trying to record something. It’s a tricky balance this, standing in a public space and expecting a certain privacy while we’re working. Usually it’s not an issue and there's time to stop and chat but the clock was ticking as I needed to get my Eurotunnel train home.
‘They asked if they should know who we were. Were we ex-riders?
‘Well, he rode the Commonwealth Games for Scotland,’ I said.
‘Oh God, don’t start,’ Richard said.
Eventually the men moved on.
‘Shall we do that whole bit again?’ Richard asked.
He pressed record and started his intro again. I was expecting him to throw a question to me, as he had during the first take, but he went on. ‘… and a very impressive second place for Florian Vermeersch, The Mayor…’
He’d nicked my joke from under my nose and stood eyes glinting as a huge smile swept across his face at the sheer audacity.
Tune in to Arrivée this weekend
Arrivée – our race reaction episodes – will be out before the water in the Roubaix velodrome showers has run stone (or should that be pavé) cold. Join Rose Manley and Denny Gray on Saturday as they recap the fourth edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes. Who will follow Lizzie Deignan, Elisa Longo Borghini and Alison Jackson into the record books?
Then on Sunday, Daniel Friebe will dial up Richard Abraham in the grandstand at the Roubaix velodrome to discuss how the men’s race shook down.
The episodes will be online on all good podcast players but subscribers to The 11.01 Cappuccino will also get them delivered to their inboxes as soon as they are ready.
Arrivée is brought to you by Buycycle the online marketplace where cyclists buy and sell bikes.
Last Woman Back
by Rose Manley, host of The Cycling Podcast Féminin
Listen to Last Woman Back, from the most recent episode
When you’re working a bike race, the finish is just the start.
There’s the mad tangle of elbows around the winner, the adrenaline-fuelled dash between clusters of press as the runners-up come in, the ever-ungainly jog to find riders at the buses, the mad search for said buses (plus SD Worx always park somewhere else), the inevitable loitering around for showering riders, the desperate pleas with press officers, the off-record chats with DSs and finally pinning all your hopes on a rider who can’t summon a wee for anti-doping even after their bus has long gone. Add to that the unpredictable running order for all the podium ceremonies, post-podium interviews and press conferences that seem to stretch ceaselessly in front of you. (A photographer friend once even calculated that he lost about three whole days a year in the time spent waiting for podium ceremonies to start.)
And after all that chaos, you traipse to the press room and once the warm procrastinating chatter from colleagues and press buffet dregs have finally run out, you realise it’s time for the work to actually begin.
It’s like this at all races, but at some, like Paris-Roubaix, the end of the race can be seemingly, well, endless.
Every year, once the roar of the crowds has floated off in the afternoon air and a year’s worth of anticipation has worn off, the bruised, dirt-clad bodies of riders lie scattered across the middle of the velodrome. They arrive first in groups, then in twos and threes, then alone and as time winds on well past the time limit, well past the patience of the crowds and press, they still arrive. Some stare battle-beaten, some weep, some smile in relief of it all being over. But they all have a story to tell.
In this month’s mini feature for The Cycling Podcast Féminin, I looked to share some of those stories. These are not the usual stories of glory, in fact in many ways they are tales of defeat. I spoke to three riders – Eluned King, Senne Knaven and Ilaria Sanguineti – all among the last to finish Paris-Roubaix, who pushed on to the velodrome regardless of the time it took and of the pain they endured.
Thanks for bringing us a memorable taste of the banter you and Richard shared. Makes my throat a bit tight, eyes watery and brings a smile and a laugh! That's a four-course meal of emotion.
Loved the store about the olden times before cell phones. And chapeau for handling all 260 kms of the cobbled sportive. Respect!
Thanks Lionel for the whimsical guides really enjoyed them….still missing your voice on the podcast please come back even if it is only occasionally!