This race sounds more interesting if you are a fan.
PARIS—François Doulcier has been tending to the cobblestones of northern France for most of his adult life, all for the one day a year when a peloton rips across them at 35 miles per hour. He understands how the stones have evolved over the years, how they behave in different conditions, and where they make the Paris-Roubaix bike race extra treacherous.

But for the past few weeks, Doulcier has been rooting for chaos, along with nearly every other cycling fan. That’s because Paris-Roubaix is set to be run in the rain this weekend for the first time since 2002. And while it might seem strange for supporters of an outdoor sport to pray for abject weather—unless you live in Green Bay during the playoffs—cycling fans see something epic in the added peril of riding bicycles on cobbles in the mud.

They know that the race known as the Hell of the North becomes even more infernal when hell gets wet.

“It’s been too long without the rain,” says Doulcier says, whose volunteer organization, Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix, looks after the cobbled sectors. “We’ve been waiting for it for 20 years.”


Paris-Roubaix is set to be run in the rain this weekend for the first time since 2002.


The wait now appears over. Weather forecasts show driving rain heading to Northern France, near the border with Belgium, and should arrive in time to douse the riders in the first-ever women’s race on Saturday and the 118th edition of the men’s event on Sunday.



What is already a brutal exercise that requires endurance, deft bike-handling skill and a taste for splattered mud turns into a test of nerve and a rider’s appetite for misery. It’s cold. It’s crowded. The surface of the cobbles feels like an ice rink. And potholes, known in French as “chicken nests,” fill up with water and mud, making them impossible to judge. Your front wheel might skip over them, or you might go over your own handlebars.

“You have a 50 percent chance of falling,” Team Deceuninck-Quickstep coach Tom Steels told the Belgian broadcaster Sporza. “Paris-Roubaix in the rain is life-threatening…So it will certainly be an incredibly hectic and dangerous race. Because of the rain it will also be an edition that we will remember for a long time.”

The only people who hate the rain as much as the fans love it are the poor souls who have to spend six hours riding through the deluge. The narrow roads, frequented mostly by tractors the rest of the year, become more suited to riders with cyclocross backgrounds than traditional road racers.

“The course is tough enough as it is,” said Danish rider Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, who will participate in the women’s race on Saturday. “I want to see a battle in which the best riders go head-to-head, not one in which the winner is simply the one who manages to stay on her bike.”

Dutch rider Dylan van Baarle was more direct. “A wet Roubaix…It’s not something that I look forward to,” he said. “It’s one of my biggest nightmares.”



The possibility of Roubaix in the rain only emerged because this will be the first modern edition of the race held in October, due to the pandemic. The race, which hasn’t occurred since 2019, is normally held in early April. The only problem with sticking to tradition is that this century has seen a clear trend toward milder springs in that corner of Europe. Botanists in nearby Flanders have even used decades of bike racing footage to show that plant life is flowering earlier in the year.

The long dry spell, meanwhile, has only made the last wet Roubaix that much more legendary.

In 2001, so much rain fell on the course in the days before the race that water had to be pumped out of the cobbled sector through the Arenberg Forest for bikes to make it across. But 2002 was the year the skies truly turned against the peloton.

“It was just more spectacular,” said Team EF Education-Nippo sports director Andreas Klier, who rode Roubaix that year.

Spectacular, in cycling-speak, doesn’t necessarily mean good. There were crashes all over the road. The run-in to each cobbled section was even more hectic than usual, since the only safe place to be was right in the front. And the riders were covered in so much spray and mud that midway through the race they looked like extras in a World War I movie.

The saving grace for Klier in 2002 was the rookie who snuck into the breakaway with him and then proceeded to tow the group for much of the afternoon. “Lucky we have this (first-year pro) here pulling in the headwind,” he remembers thinking. That turned out to be Tom Boonen. The Belgian would go on to win Paris-Roubaix a record four times.


Johan Museeuw is covered in mud during the 2002 race.


One hundred and eighty riders set off that morning from the town of Compiègne, northeast of Paris for 162.2 miles of damp, dull pain. Two-thirds of them quit. The results list only 41 official finishers, led by the Belgian cobbles specialist Johan Museeuw, but another 16 were crazy enough to push through to the end even though they were well outside the race’s time limit. By the time they reached the line, the soaked fans were already scattering. The stragglers had spent nearly eight hours on the bike.

Klier wasn’t among them. Despite feeling strong enough to ride in the breakaway, he became just another victim of a course that was never intended for bicycles—let alone bicycles in the rain.

“There’s not much you can do if someone crashes in front of you,” he said. “You really need to have no bad luck that day.”

Write to Joshua Robinson at Joshua.Robinson@wsj.com

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My favorite bike race. I almost forgot about it because it didn't run last year.

Thanks for posting.

My absolute favorite race. Back in 2015 I flew to the UK, borrowed a bike from a friend and took the ferry to Calais and a bus up to Roubaix and rode the Paris-Roubaix Sportiv, which is an amateur event that runs on the race course the day before the pros. It was windy and rainy most of the day and the wet and muddy cobbles were brutal and terrifying. It was epic! I road raced bikes for about six years and was fairly decent for my age, but that ride was the highlight of my time as a "serious" cyclist. A few years later I did the same thing at Tour of Flanders in Belgium, which was really cool too. The cobbles aren't as rough but there is more elevation and climbing.

Nice summary below of the Paris-Roubaix. The 2021 edition did not disappoint. Lot of mud, crashes, mechanical failures, and drama. It was a race that will be talked about for ages.

I remember the '05 Paris-Robaix where George Hincapie placed 2nd, highest placing for an American. For some reason I enjoyed watching him, he had this odd attraction to cobblestone races...crazy but, entertaining.