I have the Roubaix Velodrome entirely to myself. After twenty-one years away, I am standing on the legendary track, gazing across the infield at the ancient grandstand, remembering the last time I was here back in 1998 during the second Spring Classic tour I had ever organized. For the first few minutes, an elderly gentleman on his one-speed bike pedals leisurely around the track before he silently rides off through the gate on the west side, the same entrance where the peloton will be arriving in a mere six days to contest the finale of Paris-Roubaix. Has it really been that long?

Paris-Roubaix has always carried a special meaning for me. Growing up in the Midwest in the early 80’s, I was so excited when CBS Sports first started airing Paris-Roubaix on national television. I was 18 years old and it was the age when Lemond was racing on the iconic Renault-Elf Gitane powerhouse in 1984, resplendent in the World Champion’s rainbow jersey. Like millions of others in North America, I had never seen anything like this with the world’s top professional cyclists wiping out on cobblestone roads, their wheels being snapped in half like potato chips, and chasing one another through French villages with names that I couldn’t pronounce during the annual springtime ritual known as “L’Enfer du Nord.” It was an entirely new world being opened up to me and my family! Fascinated, I soaked up every word from the always-dramatic John Tesh while being introduced for the first-time to the “Voice of Cycling,” Phil Liggett. Lemond crashed out in that 1984 edition but, at the same time, it was the year that Irishman Sean Kelly really began to stamp his authority on the sport when he won the sprint just across the grass from where I now stood, caked from head-to-toe in mud and grime from his adventure of racing through the fields of northern France. The win meant so much to the fastidious Kelly that he didn’t clean his bike for the next three days.

Even now, I still get inspired watching those telecasts from the early-to-mid 80’s on YouTube or paging through old cycling magazines like Miroir du Cyclisme or Winning, I am reminded of the innocence and love of the sport that first hit me and my brothers when we taped the posters of Kelly, Lemond, Hinault, and Phil Anderson to our bedroom walls, started shaving our legs, bought our first cycling shorts with a real chamois, and set about learning new French and Italian words like Colnago, L’Alpe d’Huez, Diadora, Gitane, Campagnolo, Sidi, Stelvio, and many others. In 2019, the last year I was there before the pandemic hit, I rode the Roubaix Challenge with some dear clients, decked out in the La Vie Claire kit, remembering when Lemond raced for them in 1985 during his prime in a very muddy and wet affair like the year before, finishing fourth in the sprint to Kelly. All along the way, I thought back of where I had been in the years since 1998 but mostly I thought of my family, my brothers and our mom, riding together on the roads around our home county, before we all grew up, inspired by what happened on the roads to Roubaix.

Greg Lemond racing at 1984 Paris-Roubaix

Pros racing at Paris-Roubaix through crowds

Franco Ballerini racing at the 1998 Paris-Roubaix

Carrefour de L'Arbre entrance at Paris-Roubaix

Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle racing over at Paris-Roubaix in the mud

Wall of memories at the Roubaix Velodrome, Roubaix, France

The Roubaix Challenge

Without question, one of the best sportives on the amateur cycling calendar is the Roubaix Challenge, held on the Saturday before the men’s professional race. It’s not the most glamourous, the largest, or even the best organized sportive in the world. However, when you hit that first stretch of cobbles after your warm-up ride, you are truly in the “Hell of the North” and nothing else on earth can replicate this. You are IN IT! As you count down through the sectors of pave’, you feel the presence of all the past generations of cyclists who have proceeded you on these same roads as you come to appreciate how hard and demanding this event truly is. You’ll experience some of the most iconic stretches of cobblestones in cycling history: Wallers-Arenberg, Camphin-en-Pevele, and the Carrefour de L’Arbre. Finally, when you arrive into the velodrome, completely exhausted, the sense of history just envelopes you as you cross the finish line satisfied and profoundly happy. There is no place on earth like Roubaix!