Another Sunday In Hell: The brutal race that thwarts the greats

Sport InsightAnother Sunday In Hell: The brutal race that thwarts the greatsPublished18 minutes agoImage source, Getty ImagesByMatt WarwickBBC Sport senior journalist at Roubaix VelodromeThere is very little about this race that seems to make sense. The gruelling French farm tracks with their jagged cobblestones seem barely fit for a cow's hoof, let alone a Lycra-clad cyclists' thin tyre and ultra-light bike.Welcome to L'Enfer du Nord - the Hell of the North - as cycling's most brutal race, Paris-Roubaix, is known.At 260km (162 miles), it is not the longest of cycling's classics, and there are no mountains to climb. But that is not the point.First held in 1896, it is the unrelenting cobbles - or 'pave' - that have left some of the world's finest riders, and their bikes, bloodied and broken.Four-time Tour de France winning legend Tadej Pogacar has won every race worth winning in cycling, and often by a country mile.But he can't win Roubaix. The 30 sectors of cobbles along the ancient route got the better of the Slovenian for the second time on Sunday, when he was beaten by Belgian Wout van Aert in a sprint in the race's legendary velodrome finish."I'd describe the cobbles, not like a market place in a village as you might think, but more like someone decided to drop a load of cobbles and see where they landed, and somehow they are described as roads," Lizzie Deignan, who left blood on the handlebars of her bike when winning the inaugural women's edition in 2021, says."Think of hardest physical exertion you've ever done on a bike, and then being rattled at the same time to the point even the muscles in your fingers are so sore. It's a bit like holding on to a pneumatic drill whilst going as fast as you can on a bike."More Than the Score podcast: Paris-Roubaix: cycling’s ‘hell of the north’Van Aert beats Pogacar in thrilling Paris-Roubaix sprintPublished18 hours agoA dedicated gro...