"I was scared, I was suffering... it's truly a terrible race."
Good morning,
These are today's quotes and interviews worth your time.
Stood out to me today: "I think my fiancée was the only one who truly believed I could win."
¡Vamos!
🎤 INTERESTING INTERVIEWS
"I was scared, I was suffering... it's truly a terrible race."
Benjamin Thomas on his Paris-Roubaix debut
Benjamin Thomas arrived at the start of Paris-Roubaix without recon, without cobbled experience, and without warning. "I wasn't supposed to start," he told AFP, as reported by CyclingUpToDate. "On Friday, I was still at the Pays de la Loire tour. But we had a lot of injuries, so the team asked me to come. It was really just to help out."
The race unraveled fast. He tried to follow orders and get into the breakaway, but the pace made it impossible to move through the peloton. Then came the moment that finished his race as a competitive effort: "When Tadej Pogačar punctured, it was complete chaos. His team car overtook us and stopped in the middle of the sector. I spent 30 to 40 seconds with a foot on the ground. For me, that was game over."
The Arenberg Forest delivered something else entirely. "When I got there and saw the state of it, I wondered how bikes even come out intact. I felt like my bike was going to break in two." Every cobble left an impression. "Every ten meters there are craters. Not a single cobble is straight. It's a minefield."
He was eventually dropped at Mons-en-Pévèle, rode the final 40 kilometers largely alone, and crossed the line 139th and last, more than 24 minutes down on the winner, just ahead of the broom wagon.
"In Arenberg, I was a bit scared, yes," he said. "I was scared, I was suffering... it's truly a terrible race." What he took from the day was something the results sheet cannot show: "I'll watch it differently on TV now. I'll know what the riders go through."
"We proved that we deserved the invitation."
George Hincapie on Modern Adventure's Paris-Roubaix debut
George Hincapie watched Paris-Roubaix from the team car for the first time, and the experience left a clear mark. "So much planning that goes into this race," he said to CyclingUpToDate. "It's unlike any other race on the calendar."
Modern Adventure sent seven riders and got five to the finish, led by Ben Oliver in 47th place. The day started with ambition. "We were really aggressive at the start, trying to make the breakaway, unfortunately, it didn't happen," Hincapie said. Then Riley Pickrell went down early. "We lost Riley Pickrell early on due to a crash and then a few mechanicals after that. There were all kinds of emotions." With their most experienced cobbled rider gone, the team adapted. "We had 5 out of 7 guys finish, which is a huge deal for us."
What stood out most was the reaction in the aftermath. "The young guys were just like 'I love this, I want to come back.' They finish today's race, and they want to come back, and they want to get better."
Oliver's performance drew particular pride. "I have to remind everybody that it's Ben Oliver's 5th race ever in Europe. He was racing criteriums last year. To be up there battling it out for a top 30 at Paris-Roubaix was super fun to watch." The verdict on the whole enterprise: "We proved that we deserved the invitation."
"Jonas is a great hero and a great inspiration."
Jørgen Nordhagen on learning from Vingegaard and finding his own path
Jørgen Nordhagen is 21, already on the radar inside Visma | Lease a Bike as a future general classification option, and measured about all of it. Speaking to Marca ahead of O Gran Camiño, he was calm on the question of expectation and clear on his own identity.
On sharing a team with Jonas Vingegaard: "Jonas is a great hero and a great inspiration. I've been with him at Volta a Catalunya and I've seen how he works. But being 'the new' someone who has already won so much is difficult. I'll make my own path and we'll see in the future, although it's a great inspiration to be on the same team as him."
The distinction matters to him. Each year that passes cleanly is progress: "At my age, improving as an adult from one year to the next is very valuable. Last year I had a setback early in the season and everything took a long time to come around. Now I see that if I can string a couple of months of training together, that helps me a lot and lets me take a big step forward."
On racing, he is developing a clear profile. "I think right now the mountains are best for me. For my weight and my characteristics, that's where I feel strongest." But the goal is broader than that. "These days you can't win overall on just one terrain: you have to perform always and in all kinds of stages." At O Gran Camiño, with Vingegaard absent, the road is his to read. "Here I can have my own opportunities. I hope to be there and fight, whether for fifth place or to win. It would be great to battle against the big names."
🏆 THE SERGE BAGUET AWARD
"I was in that second group after the first block of cobbled sectors. There was not enough cooperation. Pogacar had his problem — I said to myself, Eurosport and the French TV motorbikes will bring us back soon enough, and that's exactly what happened. The motorbikes formed a wall in front of our group. We started riding 15 kilometers per hour faster behind them, with Pogačar and his group, and then Pogačar himself closed the gap. But it's surreal how the motorbike towed us in."
— Oliver Naesen, HLN Wielerpodcast
Wonder what The Serge Baguet Award is all about? Check it out here.
💬 QUICK QUOTES
"I had thrown my reconstruction article on Twitter Sunday evening and I was lying in bed rewatching the finale of Paris-Roubaix. And at 11 p.m. I get a notification on my watch: Wout van Aert likes your tweet. So I nearly fall out of bed. Does he have nothing better to do, four hours after his victory, than liking articles about himself on Twitter? And I messaged him: come on, man, don't you have anything better to do? And he goes: yeah, I do, but I was looking at my WhatsApp and I saw 240 conversations I still had to open. I thought: let me just do social media to get some distraction." — Bram Vandecapelle, HLN Wielerpodcast
"I got a 'karjolo' — a wheelbarrow." — Tadej Pogačar on the neutral service bike he received after puncturing at Paris-Roubaix, HLN
"It feels like we had leftover crowds. When we have our own day, we have all our fans; everyone is there for us, so the vibe is totally different." — Alison Jackson of St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93, a former Paris-Roubaix Femmes winner, on racing Paris-Roubaix Femmes on the same day as the men, CyclingNews
"I believe they must be running too low of tire pressure to have this many flats at Paris-Roubaix in 2026. When Rui Oliveira says he had five flats and Pogačar says he had three, when Vanderpoel had two front flats in the forest — everyone was having issues. I think they're running too low of pressure and not doing enough testing. It was the fastest Paris-Roubaix edition ever, and when you're going faster, you're hitting things harder. A pressure that worked in training — where you might be 5, 10 kilometers slower and only sustaining that speed for a much shorter distance — isn't a proper test." — Chris Horner, on his YouTube channel, on the unprecedented number of mechanicals throughout the race
"He just genuinely loves riding his bike — at home in Monaco too. I think he's one of the hardest-working people I've ever come across in my life. The fire is absolutely still there, far from gone. The idea that it isn't might have come from the fact that a lot of people saw him looking exhausted and a bit down during the Tour, but that is a completely wrong image people have formed of him." — Florian Vermeersch on Tadej Pogačar, Vals Plat Podcast
"I think my fiancée was the only one who truly believed I could win." — Julius Johansen of UAE Team Emirates-XRG, speaking after winning the opening time trial of O Gran Camiño for his first professional victory, Feltet
"He always has kind words for me after the finish. That says a lot about the qualities of the rider." — Davide Piganzoli, In De Leiderstrui, speaking ahead of the Giro d'Italia in his first season at Visma | Lease a Bike, on Jonas Vingegaard's character
"Never in a million years could I have predicted this… but here we are :)" — Taylor Phinney, upon announcing his return to track cycling to train for team pursuit with Olympic ambitions, Canadian Cycling Magazine
That's it for today. See you tomorrow 👋
Jay