PARIS — Benjamin Thomas is an Olympic cycling champion who has ridden the Tour de France and won a Giro d’Italia stage, but nothing had prepared him for the “awful” cobbles of Paris-Roubaix.
The Frenchman managed to finish the 258km race in 139th and last place, 24-and-a-half minutes behind winner Wout van Aert and only just inside the cut-off limit.
The 30-year-old omnium champion from Paris 2024 was a last-minute addition to his Cofidis team’s line-up for the ‘Hell of the North’ after several teammates had to pull out.
He had never ridden the bone-jarring cobbles of Paris-Roubaix before with its 55km of huge jagged ‘pave’ stones across 30 different sectors.
“I didn’t know any cobbled sectors, I didn’t even do the reconnaissance,” Thomas told AFP.
“All I had was the advice from the guys who told me: stay in the middle of the cobbles and leave a two-metre safety distance in front of you.”
His mission for the race was to try to get into the breakaway.
“I tried twice but the race was so fast that it’s almost impossible to get out of the peloton,” he said.
As soon as the cobbled sectors began 95km into the race, Thomas was already at the back of the field and struggling to stay in contact.
His one saving grace was that he neither crashed nor punctured.
“In the first cobbled sector there were a lot of incidents. I started to do the elastic,” he said, referring to riders who keep dropping out of a group and then dragging themselves back in.
Thomas admitted that he had felt scared in the fearsome Arenberg forest cobbled section where pre-race favourite Mathieu van der Poel punctured twice and saw his victory hopes go up in smoke.
“When I saw the state of it, I was thinking, ‘how do bicycles come out of that in one piece’,” said Thomas.
“It felt like my bike was going to snap in half. Every two metres there was a crater, there’s not a single coble that is straight – it’s a minefield.
“I was a bit scared in the Arenberg, yes. I didn’t really have any frights on other sectors, just a couple of skids.
“But I cannot imagine what it’s like in the rain.”
He battled on but on another tough sector, the Mons-en-Pevele, he lost contact with the back of the bunch.
“At the end I was really suffering. I focused on staying on the cobbles” to avoid hitting a hole and going over the handlebars.
“At Mons-en-Pevele, I lost the wheel of the bunch and I was alone for the last 40 kilometres – well, nearly, as 10 kilometres from the velodrome I caught Noah Vandenbranden and we finished together.”
It was a memorable experience, but not one the diminutive rider is planning on repeating.
“I’m proud that I’ve done it. I’ll look at the race differently on television now,” he said.
“I will know what the riders go through. I was surprised by the intensity.
“Normally you always have a moment when it eases off but it was an incredible pace.
“I’d blown a gasket 100 kilometres from the finish. At the front, it’s a whole other madness.
“I was lucky, I kind of went between the rain drops, I didn’t even puncture.
“But at the back there are struggles that you don’t see on television. It’s awful!”
As he was riding through the Carrefour de l’Arbre cobbled sector, Thomas saw fans celebrating and learnt that Van Aert had won.
“I did the calculations: I knew I had 16 kilometres left and 25 minutes to get inside the time limit.
“We finished just before the sweeper truck” which picks up the stragglers.
