The Last Kingdom: Why Roubaix Is the Final Frontier for Tadej Pogacar

There is a particular electricity around Paris Roubaix this year, and it all comes back to one idea. Roubaix is the last kingdom Tadej Pogacar has not conquered. He has taken every other terrain the sport can throw at him: mountains, Monuments, Grand Tours, cobbled bergs, Italian epics. But the Hell of the North remains the one place where the crown still sits on someone else’s head.

Last year, in his debut, Pogacar gave us a glimpse of what happens when a rider built for the impossible steps into a race designed to break people. He was superb on the cobbles, confident in the chaos, and close enough to Mathieu van der Poel to make the entire cycling world sit up straighter. It was not just impressive. It was unsettling. Suddenly the question was no longer whether Pogacar could survive Roubaix. It was whether he could win it.

But even with all that, Van der Poel remains the favourite. This course is made for him. There are no steep bergs for Pogacar to launch from, no ramps where he can detonate the field with that trademark power. Roubaix rewards rhythm, weight and brute force, and Van der Poel has all three in abundance. Last year’s late slip robbed us of the velodrome showdown we deserved, but the truth is Van der Poel looked the likely winner anyway. And this time around, Mads Pedersen and Wout van Aert arrive with form, hunger and a far better profile for this race than Pogacar.

Still, Pogacar comes in red hot. He has raced only three times this season, all one day classics, and he has dominated every one of them. His Milan San Remo demolition did not just win him a Monument. It sent a warning shot across the entire peloton. He has already taken MSR. He has already taken Flanders. And now he is staring down the last kingdom on the map.

What makes this attempt different is the intent. This is not Pogacar rolling in for a bit of fun. He has been out on the cobbles with UAE’s most experienced rouleurs, riding the Carrefour de l’Arbre and Camphin en Pevele like a man preparing for an exam he intends to ace. That is not tourism. That is a mission.

And he has already proven he belongs. Finishing second in his debut changed the tone of the entire conversation. He is no longer a climber dabbling in Roubaix. He is a contender. And the old truth still holds: if you can podium here once, you can win it.

Look at what he has already collected. Four Tours de France. A Giro. Flanders. Liege. Five Lombardias. It is a palmares so outrageous it barely fits on a page, yet Roubaix remains the one Monument missing. The white whale. The final frontier. The last kingdom.

But the real drama is not just Pogacar versus the cobbles. It is Pogacar versus Van der Poel on Van der Poel’s terrain. Van der Poel is the reigning king of the cobbles, the 2023 champion, the rider whose physiology and ferocity seem purpose built for this race. If Pogacar beats him here, the GOAT debate does not just heat up. It explodes.

How This Year’s Roubaix Will Be Raced: The Hayman Lens

This edition will not look like the Roubaix of even five years ago. The speed, the depth and the tactics have all shifted, and nobody explains that evolution better than Mat Hayman.

From the podcast:

“There is not a lot of tactics out there. Everyone just rides full everywhere they go.”   “A climb that used to split the bunch in half does nothing now. The level is just so high.”

Hayman’s point is simple: modern Roubaix is less chess, more furnace.

The race used to build slowly, with long stretches of positioning and patience. Now it is full gas from the first sector. The best riders do not wait for the Arenberg. They try to break the race open fifty or sixty kilometres earlier. The bunch no longer fractures in predictable places because the collective level is too high. Riders who once would have been dropped are now holding the wheel at speeds that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Hayman again:

“Guys are talking about having twenty or thirty watts more than four or five years ago. And four or five years ago they were getting results with those numbers. Now they are just another bike rider.”

That is the environment Pogacar is stepping into. A race where the strongest riders do not hide, where the pace never drops, and where the margin for error is almost zero.

It also means the old Roubaix wisdom still matters. Course knowledge. Timing. Positioning. The ability to read the wind and the bunch. Hayman hopes that race craft still has a place:

“I hope we can still find that essence of race craft. It is not just a numbers game.”

For Pogacar, that is both the challenge and the opportunity. He has the engine to survive the new era, but he also has the instincts to exploit the old one.

Paris Roubaix Femmes: A Field Full of Firepower, Chaos and Genuine Contenders

If the men’s race is a clash of kingdoms, the women’s edition is shaping up like a full scale siege. The depth, the form lines and the team dynamics are sharper than ever, and the defending champion Pauline Ferrand Prevot sits right at the centre of it.

Ferrand Prevot was superb last year, riding with the kind of authority that only a multi discipline world champion can bring to the cobbles. Her second place at Flanders confirmed she is exactly where she needs to be. The big question is whether Marianne Vos, cycling royalty in her own right, is going to ride and give Visma the two headed monster they lacked last year. If Vos is firing, PFP suddenly has the most experienced lieutenant in the race, and that changes everything.

But the biggest threat to everyone is the SD Worx Protime juggernaut. Lorena Wiebes and Lotte Kopecky remain the most explosive pairing in the peloton, and Roubaix suits them in different, equally dangerous ways. Wiebes has the raw power to survive the sectors and still sprint. Kopecky has the engine, the race IQ and the sheer bloody mindedness to win this race solo, in a group or in absolute chaos. If they reach the velodrome together, it is game over for everyone else.

It is a genuine shame that Demi Vollering, who looked untouchable last Sunday, has chosen to skip Roubaix to focus on the Ardennes. She has the form to win, and her absence removes one of the most intriguing tactical layers. But it also means SD Worx will be all in on Kopecky and Wiebes, which might actually make them more dangerous.

Then there is Elisa Longo Borghini, the 2022 champion and the most aggressive rider in almost any race she enters. She leads UAE with the kind of intent that makes her impossible to ignore. When she is on, she does not wait for the race to happen. She forces it. Her win two years ago came from that exact instinct: attack early, attack hard and trust that everyone else will crack before she does.

Behind the headliners, the depth is enormous. Pfeiffer Georgi continues to grow into one of the smartest cobbled riders in the world. Chiara Consonni has the speed to punish hesitation. Riders like Ruby Roseman Gannon and Letizia Paternoster are exactly the type who can slip into the right move while the favourites stare at each other.

This is the strongest, most unpredictable edition of Paris Roubaix Femmes yet. The defending champion is in form. The biggest team in the world brings two legitimate winners. A former champion is hunting another. And the cobbles, as always, do not care about reputations.

Watch the podcast with Mat Hayman