Mathieu van der Poel once again dominated the Paris-Roubaix monument

The current cyclo-cross and road race world champion enjoyed another victory at the monumental Paris-Roubaix after a year. He had virtually no rivals in this year’s edition and clearly dominated the race.

Van der Poel, as he did a year ago, decided in a solo breakaway

After the injury to Wout van Aert, van der Poel entered the race as the number one favourite. He fulfilled his role as the clear favourite in the race to a tee. If last year he decided his first place with 15 km to go, this year he went even further. He started before the dreaded cubes and went into the breakaway with 60 km to go, giving his rivals an equal 3 minutes.

Mahieu van der Poel dominated the second of the three monuments this year. Only in the Milan-San Remo race did he fare less well, finishing 10th. However, he then dominated the Tour of Flanders monument for the third time in his career and is now on a total of 6 winning notches from these best classics in the world.

He still needs to conquer Lutych-Bastogne-Lutych and the Giro di Lombardia to make his indelible mark on history. If Tadej Pogačar rules the hills, van der Poel rules the classics again.

The decisive entry

Somewhat surprisingly for many, van der Poel made his entrance with about 60km to go in the nearly 260km race. He left about 30 pursuers behind him and after 30km in a solo breakaway he had a lead of almost two minutes over his rivals.

He didn’t let up from his pace at all. On the contrary, he was adding second by second. It should be noted that his Alpecin stable did an excellent job of covering potential breakaways, allowing van der Poel to concentrate fully on his breakaway, where he clearly demonstrated his strength.

He clearly demonstrated once again that the current peloton will make him very hard to beat in one-off races. Although Tadej Pogačar is capable of anything, due to a different programme and preparation for the upcoming Giro D’Italia he did not take part.

Moreover, he didn’t want to risk potential injuries on the cobbles, as happened to his serious rivals Remco Evenepoel and Jonas Vingegaard in this week’s Tour of the Basque Country. Alpecin’s success was underlined by Jasper Phillipsen’s second place in the sprint, who outsprinted Mads Pedersen at the line.

Paris-Roubaix (WorldTour) – 259.7km

1. Mathieu van der Poel (Belgium/Alpecin) 5:25:58

2. Jasper Phillipsen (Belg./Alpecin) -3:00

3. Mads Pedersen (Denmark/Lidl-Trek) -3:00

4. Nils Politt (Germany/UAE Emirates) -3:00

29. Pavel Bittner (CZ/DSM) -7:00

43. Mathias Vacek (Czech Republic/Trek Segafredo) -7:22

Source: UCI, Paris – Rouibaix