It is his best win of his career. Dylan van Baarle won the 119th edition of Paris-Roubaix on Sunday 17 April. After a dantesque race in which he was always present at the front, the 29-year-old Dutch rider arrived first at the Roubaix velodrome and was able to enjoy the lap of honor without any pressure. The Ineos Grenadiers rider crossed the line 1’47” ahead of Wout van Aert and Stefan Küng, who complete the podium.
The key moment was his attack, as postman, in the Camphin-en-Pévèle sector, less than twenty kilometers from the finish, where he took a break from Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) and Yves Lampaert (Quick Step -Alpha Vinyl). Van Baarle drove the perfect race and led from start to finish. We would almost forget that he had to switch bikes along the way. A deserved hour of glory for whoever we usually stick the model team member label on.
Some of the French excelled in this race, most notably Adrien Petit (Intermarché-Wanty-Gobert), the first tricolor to cross the line in sixth. His best performance in the event after finishing ninth in 2017. Laurent Pichon, a long-time escapee, took a remarkable eighth place. At home Florian Sénéchal had to settle for thirteenth place.
The abundance of racing facts is what makes Paris-Roubaix special. The first of the day was a head start. While the first cobblestone sector had not yet crossed, the Ineos Grenadiers formation accelerated the pace and took advantage of a crosswind to trap the majority of the leaders, including Mathieu van der Poel, Wout van Aert or Stefan Küng and Mads Pedersen. .
After the first three sectors, at the entrance of that of Saint-Python (sector 27), as the second group approached the lead, a huge collective fall in the first peloton slowed Van der Poel and others, relegated again more than a minute behind .
But the favorites were finally discovered at 60 km from the finish. It is impossible to leave two minutes ahead of a rider like Mohoric, he crowned himself Milan-San-Remo in March. In the dire sector of Mons-en-Pévèle, it was Wout van Aert who accelerated with phenomenal power and proved to be the strongest, but van der Poel and Küng very quickly returned to the Belgian once the cobblestones were up. The group never stopped rebuilding, until Mathieu van der Poel came to a halt before the power of Van Aert and Küng.
But the damage was already done. And up front, Van Baarle kept digging on all his opponents, until Roubaix. Van Aert had the last word for second place, in the sprint ahead of Küng, Devriendt and Mohoric. Yves Lampaert could have intervened in this battle for second place, but the Belgian crashed violently by a spectator at seven kilometers from the finish.
For Van Baarle it is the initiation after his second place inu Tour of Flanders two weeks ago† “It’s unbelievable, I couldn’t believe it when I entered the velodrome. Winning a Monument was a goal for me”, he said after the race. The achievement is also historic for his team, as Ineos Grenadiers (or the Sky before) had never won Paris-Roubaix. It’s over, after a race that will go down in history.
