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The “Paris-Roubaix weekend,” it’s a better double-header than even Christmas and Boxing Day.
And this year, cycling’s two-day excursion into the cobblestone cauldron of “The Hell of the North” could be better than ever.
Can anybody stop Lotte Kopecky from making the ultimate flex at Paris-Roubaix Femmes Avec Zwift?
What the heck is Tadej Pogačar going to do in his rulebook-defying debut on the pavé?
And just to make it all a bit more tantalizing, the wheel-snapping stones of Roubaix might be wet.
Here are the key plotlines of Paris-Roubaix weekend:
The first wet Roubaix since 2021? Sort of
Will it rain? That’s the question on everybody’s lips whenever “Paris-Roubaix week” rolls around.
The answer for 2025?
Yes and no.
Forecasts are calling for bright blue skies and low winds for Paris-Roubaix Femmes on Saturday.
The next day, Paris-Roubaix will see mixed conditions.
Early sun is predicted to give way to heavy showers and a stiff tailwind from lunchtime, right when the peloton will be approaching the pavé.
But sorry to say it cobblestone sadists.
This weekend won’t be the type of “wet Roubaix” that left riders inches deep in head-to-toe mud in 2021.
2 years ago today, Roubaix ‘21
One of the wildest races in the history of this sport
The ⛈️
The carnage through the Arenberg
MVDP riding like a maniac
Florian Vermeersch
Moscon’s flat & crash ♂️
The white shoe coversBut most of all
SONNY COLBRELLI pic.twitter.com/ifnfwgC8e9
— Atlanta Rouleur Collection (@AtlantaRouleur) October 3, 2023
Northern France is set to be sun-baked all this week, and the parcours will likely be bone dry and dusty until Sunday.
Only the heaviest rainfall Sunday would create the slop that caused havoc after an overnight deluge in 2021. Any precipitation could make the stones slick, greasy, and even more treacherous.
Tadej Pogačar might be praying to the weather gods.
He needs fast, aggressive, sun-parched pavé. A heavy, muddy race would tilt the race toward the 80kg bigs.
Of course, forecasts can change fast.
“Lille” and “Roubaix” will continue to be the most popular search terms in Pogi’s weather app for a few days yet.
The audacity of Pog
Tadej Pogačar racing Paris-Roubaix, it’s the storyline of the season.
And Pogačar’s high-profile debut is far from just a sub-plot – he’s in the picture to win the darn thing.
This skinny climber ranks alongside two-time Roubaix champion Mathieu van der Poel and cobblestone bruisers Wout van Aert and Mads Pedersen in the betting odds.
If Pogi pulls it off?
He would become the first reigning Tour de France champion to conquer “The Hell of the North” since Bernard Hinault in 1981.
Is Tadej Pogačar the Modern ‘GOAT’?
Paris-Roubaix this weekend might give us the answer:https://t.co/qFAafNxkoz
— Velo (@velovelovelo__) April 8, 2025
Pogačar’s bulldozing victory last weekend at the Tour of Flanders, and the clout of his UAE Emirates-XRG support crew, should leave both historians and front-page news reporters poised with their pens.
“Roubaix is a completely different race [to Flanders], but I will accept the challenge, and I’ll try to do my best,” Pogačar said after he soloed to the win in Oudenaarde. “I know that Flanders suits me a bit better, but you never know.
“Roubaix is also a very hard race, and I think that with the shape I have now, I should give it a try.”
Kopecky’s cobblestone flex
Lotte Kopecky said she flashed her flexed bicep on winning the Tour of Flanders as part of an in-joke with teammate Anna van der Breggen.
It turns out “the guns” refers back to a poster on the SD Worx-Protime bus and the team’s newly adopted battle cry.
But you know what would be the ultimate flex from Kopecky?
If the classics-crushing world champion becomes the first to win both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix Femmes in the same season.
Hot off the back of a third victory at De Ronde, it’s hard not to back Kopecky – defending Roubaix champion, no less – from completing the cobblestone double.
The 29-year-old’s closest personal rival Elisa Longo Borghini is out of this weekend’s race with concussion, and SD Worx-Protime’s nemesis team Lidl-Trek looked lost in the beer tents last Sunday at De Ronde.
“Last year I had a bad feeling in the Tour of Flanders and I won Paris-Roubaix the week after,” Kopecky said Sunday. “Now I hope that there are more great races to come.”
The peloton has been warned.
The ‘Arenberg rectangle’ is in, the chicane is out
Remember “that” chicane in last year’s men’s Paris-Roubaix?
ASO’s controversial safety measure is gone.
“This year, we have found an alternative that allows us to slow down the riders in a more fluid manner, via a small detour that runs alongside the mining site in Arenberg. With this introduction, there will be four right-angle corners in the kilometer before the Trouée d’Arenberg,” ASO revealed earlier this year.
In 2024, race officials manufactured a 180-degree bend into the route directly before the atrocious Arenberg “trench.”
The deviation was installed to slow the bunch into what are rated the roughest cobblestones of the course. Previous editions of Paris-Roubaix had seen teams create 60kph leadouts to position their leaders into the 5-star sector. Chaos ensued.
However, the 2o24 peloton was not a fan of the new hairpin, which some felt made racing more dangerous.
This year, the chicane becomes a rectangle of side-roads.
“There will be four right turns within 600 meters,” race director Thierry Gouvenou said this week. “The approach should be smoother than with the hairpin bend that we had last year.”
Gouvenou’s new experiment will not impact Paris-Roubaix Femmes, which does not include the Trouée d’Arenberg in its parcours.
Will the “Arenberg rectangle” impact the final result Sunday?
No.
But it could mean a few more riders make it to the velodrome unscathed.
Van Aert’s career-long quest
Will Sunday be the day Wout van Aert wins his coveted cobblestone monument and kicks stoney dust into the eyes of the doubters?
If you asked that question before last weekend’s Tour of Flanders, there would have been only one answer.
However, after a resurgent, resilient ride to fourth at De Ronde, WVA is “back.”
Visma-Lease a Bike is now backing its under-scrutiny leader for something special this Sunday.
Van Aert built a huge diesel engine during his recent trip to altitude, and it should be finely tuned to the high power and grueling attrition of “Hell of the North.”
Van Aert’s form in the finale suggests he might be hitting top shape just in time for Paris-Roubaix https://t.co/B9Ll9dcC2S
— Velo (@velovelovelo__) April 6, 2025
“Paris-Roubaix is the classic that suits Wout best. That has been the case his entire career. It is also evident at the Tour of Flanders that while he was very good it will be very difficult to ever win there. Roubaix will suit him better,” Visma-Lease a Bike head of performance Mathieu Heijboer told Wielerflits.
“His form will probably continue to improve next week as well. We can work towards Roubaix with confidence,” Heijboer said after Flanders.
Will Van Aert’s form rise to the level of imperious Tadej Pogačar and Wout’s archrival Mathieu van der Poel?
We’ll find out Sunday.
