Читать книгу Etape. The untold stories of the Tour de France’s defining stages онлайн

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They are roads, but rarely used as such these days and hardly worthy of the name. Some are maintained purely for the purpose of meting out punishment once a year, around Easter time, to the cyclists of Paris–Roubaix.

Every decade or so, the pavé features not only in Paris–Roubaix but also in the Tour de France. In 2004 it was the pavé that destroyed the hopes of the Basque climber, Iban Mayo. In 2010 it did the same to another stick-thin climber, Fränk Schleck. On that occasion, even Lance Armstrong, who had capitalised on Mayo’s misfortune six years earlier, was a diminished figure, caught behind the carnage and reduced to chasing shadows, or younger, faster versions of himself, over the bone-jarring stones. ‘Sometimes you’re the hammer and sometimes you’re the nail,’ said Armstrong after the stage. ‘Today, I was the nail.’

Paris–Roubaix lends itself to great suffering and great quotes. Arguably the best is Theo de Rooy’s following the 1985 race, when he crashed, withdrew, and vented: ‘It’s bollocks, this race. You’re working like an animal, you don’t have time to piss, you wet your pants; you’re riding in mud like this, you’re slipping. It’s a piece of shit …’