Key Takeaways: Paris-Roubaix 2024

Breaking down the key points of Sunday's Hell of the North and how Mathieu Van der Poel's Alpecin team set up yet another unstoppable solo breakaway win

On the heels of a truly dominant performance from his Alpecin-Deceuninck team to shred the peloton and soften his key rivals early in the race, Mathieu van der Poel entered the extremely rarified air of history’s best Cobbled riders by winning his second-consecutive Paris-Roubaix title, and completing the coveted Flanders-Roubaix double, with a seemingly unstoppable 60-kilometer-long solo ride that saw him finish three minutes in front of the closest chasers on Sunday over the infamous cobbled roads of Northern France. Behind, his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Jasper Philipsen, whose presence in the chase group was key to neutralizing any serious pursuit, won the sprint for second over Lidl-Trek’s Mads Pedersen. Check out the blow-by-blow breakdown of the race’s critical moments and the key takeaways below:

Paris-Roubaix 2024 Top Ten:
1) Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +0 (5:25:58)
2) Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +3’00
3) Mads Pedersen (Lidl Trek) +3’00
4) Nils Politt (UAE) +3’00
5) Stefan Küng (Groupama-FDJ) +3’15
6) Gianni Vermeersch (Alpecin-Deceuninck) +3’47
7) Laurence Pithie (Groupama-FDJ) +3’48
8) Jordi Meeus (Bora-Hansgrohe) +4’47
9) Søren Wærenskjold (Uno-X) +4’47
10) Madis Mihkels (Intermarché-Wanty) +4’47

To expand on my initial Roubaix thoughts from Sunday after the race, I’ve broken down the key takeaways from the final cobbled Monument below:

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Race Notebook

160km-to-go: As soon as the cobbled sectors begin, Mathieu van der Poel’s Alpecin team uses their combination of superior technical skill, power, and just plain physical size to mass at the front. This lets them pick their own line over the cobblestones, set a hard pace to fatigue their leader’s rivals and reduce flats since they can pick cleaner lines over the rough cobbles.

154km: This effort immediately starts to pay dividends as Alpecin can use the tough ‘road’ surface and crosswinds to thin down the peloton significantly. Notably, the Alpecin-set pace is so high that the gap to the breakaway is already down to a minute.

135.7km: After catching the breakaway, Alpecin keeps the pace high every time they go over a sector of cobblestones as they continue to open gaps in the peloton that either shoot pre-race favorites out the back or force those who suffer from poor positioning mistakes and/or flats, to make significant energy investments to catch back on.

95.4km: After a high-speed sprint into the new Arenberg Forest chicane, we can immediately see just how much the compression of the slowing, accelerating group gives the advantage to those who entered at the front as those at the back nearly slow to stop.

95.2km: For example, as Mads Pedersen, Jasper Philipsen, and Mathieu van der Poel enter the roughest and most important sector of cobblestones, those who entered the chicane in the back are just starting to get back up to speed.

93.9km: After overtaking Pedersen, Van der Poel accelerates on the extremely rough cobblestones of the trouée d'Arenberg and, partly due to the relentless work of his team, starts to open up gaps as his rivals already begin to crack.

92.8km: As Van der Poel exits the forest with a slight gap, a now-isolated Pedersen has to accelerate to close down the gap as Philipsen sits on his wheel as Alpecin’s endgame utilizing their ‘squeeze’ technique comes into focus.

87.2km: There is a slight re-grouping after Philipsen and Pedersen pause to change wheels after flats, and Alpecin’s third rider in this elite front group, Gianni Vermeersch, somewhat strangely attacks, then sits up as Nils Politt and Stefan Küng attack out of the peloton to create a dangerous front group that notably doesn’t include Van der Poel. This is one of the rare points of the race where things could have gone sideways for Van der Poel, since his teammate is suddenly being pulled clear by two strong riders as he is caught behind.

80.6km-69.1km: However, instead of sitting back and forcing Van der Poel into the difficult position of either watching Vermeersch ride clear and hoping he can win out of the three rider group, or close down his own teammate, Pedersen’s Lidl-Trek team comes to the front and uses all their remaining strength to close down the gap over a 10km period.

59.8km: After the front group is back together, Vermeersch returns to the front to set a hard pace on a three-star sector of cobblestones. Van der Poel attacks off this pace and comes around his teammate with a somewhat shocking amount of speed.

59.7km: The presence of Vermeersch on the front means that when he is attempting to respond, Pedersen is forced off the crown of the road and into rougher cobblestones, which creates just enough hesitation for Van der Poel to open up a gap of a few seconds that immediately begins to balloon out of control due to his superior strength and technical skill over the cobblestones.

59.6km: Once Van der Poel is clear of the field, he throws down an unbelievable amount of power to get up to speeds approaching 40mph. The fact he can do this over extremely rough cobblestones, all while looking incredibly smooth, shows just how talented of a rider he is and why he is nearly unbeatable in these conditions.

50.8km: As Mads Pedersen attempts to respond behind, he is closely marked by Vermeersch and Philipsen. But, even without these two anchors, the fact that this group, which is made up of the best of the rest in this rest, is bouncing and struggling on the cobblestones compared to Van der Poel, means he still likely wouldn’t be able to close the gap.

43.8km-42.1km: As Van der Poel opens his gap to close to two minutes, Pedersen, the strongest rider in the group behind, pulls in vain as Philipsen sits like an anchor on the chase group, with everyone knowing he won’t chase his teammate and that he has the ability to outsprint them when they get to the velodrome.

6.5km: With Küng distanced, Alpecin is so confident in Van der Poel’s now nearly three-minute gap that Philipsen begins to rotate through in the three-rider group behind, which tells us, unlike last week at Flanders, Van der Poel isn’t cracking and is somewhat easily cruising toward victory.

Finish: After Van der Poel casually rolls over the finish line to take his second-consecutive Roubaix win, Philipsen easily wins the sprint for second place almost three minutes later, and shows why his presence in the chase group was so menacing, to pick up another impressive second place, with Pedersen finishing third.

Five Key Takeaways

The first three takeaways are my initial post-race thoughts sent to premium subscribers directly after the race on Sunday

1) Mathieu van der Poel: For the third time this season, Van der Poel won a cobbled race after an incredibly long (40+ kilometers) solo breakaway effort. Some viewers might complain that these sledgehammer efforts keep the race from building into a beautiful crescendo, but on the flip side, the physical form, power, and talent required to do this when everyone knows it is coming is incredibly impressive.

• In the course of a week, the 29-year-old World Champion has gone from four to six career Monument wins, surpassing Tadej Pogačar as the active rider with the most Monument victories in the process, completed the coveted Tour of Flanders/Paris-Roubaix double, and padded his one-day palmares to the point where he is getting closer and closer to being considered the best cobbled rider in history.

  • It may sound like an absurd statement, but after just four seasons of racing both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, his tally of three Flanders and two Roubaix wins means he is already closing in on Tom Boonen’s record of four Roubaix and three Flanders win.

    • Also, he has six wins through his first 17 Monument starts, which is better than Eddy Merckx, the greatest rider of all time, who won five Monuments through his first 17 starts.

      • The most impressive thing about Van der Poel is that, even after starting at such a high level, he appears to be improving rapidly, especially when we consider that the same rider has solo cleared at will in 2024, lost this race in 2021 in a three-up sprint after being unable to drop Florian Vermeersch and Sonny Colbrelli on the final cobbled sectors.

2) Alpecin-Deceuninck & Jasper Philipsen: For the second time in a year, the Belgian team, which entered the first division just last season, has finished 1-2 at one of the biggest one-day races in the world for the second straight year and has announced their arrival as the sport’s preeminent one-day team by sweeping the season’s opening three Monuments (a feat so impressive that I couldn’t find another example of a team accomplishing this), while still having viable options to win the fourth in two weeks at Liège-Bastogne-Liège (if he races, Van der Poel, and, even if he doesn’t, in-form riders like Quinten Hermans).

• One of the key components of Alpecin’s transformation from a small team that punched above its weight to the main force of one-day racing is its ability to come into a race with its focus on a predefined plan (but not an overreliance on it).

  • For example, the team, full of technically adept and powerful riders, hit the first cobbled sector at the front and immediately went to work whittling things down. The effort was so successful that by the time Van der Poel exited the Forest of Arenberg, he was on his own at the front, with an isolated Mads Pedersen, who had Van der Poel’s Alpecin teammate Jasper Philipsen glued to his own as the only viable rival within touching distance of the eventual winner.

    • This pre-planned move to break the race up from nearly 160 kilometers from the finish line looked risky and took immense confidence to execute, but ultimately played out perfectly since it put Van der Poel’s rivals in difficult and isolated positions, forced them to close gaps and eventually soften them up to the point where they couldn’t respond to his race-winning solo attack with nearly 60 kilometers remaining.

• With Gianni Vermeersch and Jasper Philipsen, Alpecin put two riders inside the top ten and was able to mark the chase group to the point where Van der Poel’s win was all but sealed the moment he got a gap of more than 20 seconds.

  • Considering his day job is winning Tour de France stages, Philipsen’s second straight runner-up finish, in addition to his Milano-Sanremo win earlier this season, is beyond impressive, and his presence at the front again in 2024 put every other rider in a difficult position.

3) Modern racing tactics favor the megastars: As recently as 2021, we saw multiple riders come into the Roubaix Velodrome to sprint for the win, but since then, we’ve seen three consecutive solo winners at the end of the three fastest editions in the race’s history (2024: 1st, 2023: 2nd, 2022: 3rd). While these increased speeds are likely in some part due to favorable winds and weather, they also undoubtedly reflect an increased aggressiveness and the fact that attacks are coming further and further out, which fatigues the group and makes it more likely that a single rider will be able to ride away from the others.

• At first glance, this trend of the favorites having their teams up things up further and further out might seem risky since it could appear to open up the chance of their leader bonking; in reality, it actually decreases the variables between the top favorites and the eventual win.

  • For one, it thins down the group, meaning the top riders have to expend less energy to position themselves in the bunch, and also decreases the chances of a flat tire since their line of sight is enhanced.

  • Secondly, in theory, a harder race benefits the strongest riders by adding fatigue to the others. This increases the chances of the strongest rider getting away solo, which, in turn, decreases the chances they will bring riders to the finish line who have a chance of outsprinting them (see 2021).

• These ultra-aggressive tactics have essentially raised the necessary bar of the functional threshold power, and overall strength of team, needed to win these Monuments, which partly explains why, over the past 24 months, only four riders (Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar, Jasper Philipsen, Remco Evenepoel) spread over three teams (UAE, Alpecin and Soudal-QuickStep) has won the ten Monuments contested during that time period.

  • And, with Wout van Aert and Primož Roglič crashing hard recently, it is fairly likely that this quartet of riders will continue this streak by winning every major one-day race through 2024 (Liege, Olympics, Worlds, Lombardia).

4) Mads Pedersen & Lidl-Trek: After impressively besting Van der Poel at Gent-Wevelgem winner, the 28-year-old World Champion never quite sparkled in the same way after his bad crash at Dwars door Vlaanderen, but still managed to pick up his first career podium finish at Paris-Roubaix and the third Monument podium of his career. Considering this, plus the fact that he was the best non-Alpecin rider at Roubaix, we have to consider his day a success.

• However, even taking into account the fact that Pedersen may never have been able to match the speed of Van der Poel in full attack mode on the cobblestones and that he was expertly and ruthlessly squeezed by Alpecin’s superior numbers, it still seems like both he and his Lidl-Trek team wasted a rare chance to turn the tables on Van der Poel.

  • When Vermseersch strangely pulled Politt and Küng up the road, instead of making the conservative decision to close down the move for Van der Poel, had Lidl-Trek played things more aggressive and forced Van der Poel to decide if he was going to let his teammate be pulled clear with two dangerous rivals, or close down his own teammate, they may have had a chance of slightly weakening the Alpecin vice had Philipsen been forced to work to reel in the group and/or Van der Poel attacked to bridge the gap.

    • Even though Van der Poel bridging the gap would have been unorthodox, it was most likely going to happen, and would have allowed Pedersen to turn the tables and sit on Van der Poel and Philipsen’s wheel as they did the work.

      • Of course, this also would have left open the possibility of Lidl-Trek passively sitting back as three rivals rode clear to contest the win and take every podium spot, which is why it was perhaps too big of a risk for them to take.

5) Visma-LAB’s surprising lack of depth was exposed: After dominating the opening cobbled weekend at Omloop and Kuurne and looking like they were going to roll through the one-day classics with little-to-no resistance, things quickly fell off the rails for the superteam as soon as Wout van Aert went to his altitude training camp, with the team netting no further one-day wins and failing to put a rider outside of Van Aert on the podium of any Classic after Tratnik won Omloop in February.

• While they got nice rides from the young twin brothers, Tim and Mick van Dijke (who finished 16th and 19th) at Roubaix, this clearly is not what they were hoping for when they drew up their Classics plans over the winter.

  • Also, the fact that these two 24-year-old previously unknown brothers were their top options at Paris-Roubaix is shocking, considering that just a few weeks ago, the conventional wisdom was that Visma would have too many big-name one-day riders.

    • But, with Van Aert’s injury, Christophe Laporte and Dylan van Baarle falling ill during the campaign, and Matteo Jorgenson going home to rest after a long spring, they were left with a surprisingly thin squad.

• Even more concerning for that team, outside of their bad injury and illness luck, is that for the fifth straight year, they have looked extremely vulnerable to flat tires and showed a shocking lack of depth.

  • In fact, since 2020, Visma has been surprisingly reliant on Van Aert for results at Flanders and Roubaix and has never displayed the type of commanding performance Alpecin did on Sunday to grab three top tens while controlling the peloton for their leader late in the race.

    • For example, through 2020-2024, they have only placed a single non-Van Aert rider in the top ten at Flanders (Laporte 9th in 2022) and Roubaix (Laporte 10th in 2023).

      • This surprising lack of depth and their beat-ability in major one-days (zero Monument wins since 2020) is something to keep in mind when the ‘Visma Classics Superteam’ narrative gets rolling during the opening weekend in 2025 and everyone starts to run for the hills.