Paris Roubaix 2023 Recap

Well. We had John Degenkolb. We can probably end the post there.

We jest, but as Degenkolb went down at no fault of his own within the final few kilometers we definitely called foul play. But after the replay, we were "it was a racing incident" side of the fence. Riding on the shoulder is always a risk, from stick mud, barriers - to in this case, being on the end of a pinch after another rider dominoes avoiding a gap in the middle of the cobbles. That's Roubaix.

Alas, our hearts, and our wallets go out to Mr. Degenkolb.

As for the rest, let's dig in. As a reminder, here was our betting preview for Paris Roubaix 2023.

Our value picks didn't pan out which we were okay with. Madous DNF'd, Zingle didn't start, and Stybar our extreme value picked finished, but in 79th.

Paris Roubaix is a unique race. In our opinion it's more of a lottery than another well known monument, Milan San Remo. Between flats, cobbles, and mechanicals even the best of riders (👀 Wout) struggled to not be affected.

Our top 10 picks, Seb Vanmarcke came 16th. Well within range, but just not quite there.

Overall though the race was something special wasn't it? Personally we would have loved to see an all out fight between the final seven in the breakaway group - instead of having it decided by a hit by Alpecin-Deceuninck on Degenkolb (🙃) and a flat for Mr. Wout.

But overall, we got a tremendous amount of action out of almost the entire 256.6 km of racing (and personally some of the team got almost as many hours on the trainer as the riders).

Any other takeaways? That even though announcer Rob Hatch clearly had money on Dylan Van Baarle (DVB crashed out unfortunately), we're still happy we didn't play him.

Why? Because just because he had won the year before, it was worth noting (and we'll do this in future previews) that he was on another team at the time (INEOS Grenadiers compared to his current JumboVisma).

Being on INEOS, he wouldn't have had to work for Wout if push came to shove. And push did come to shove the prior year. DVB was in a lead group with Wout but rode away. Would DVB have ridden away this year if in the same position and both of them are on JumboVisma? We don't think so. Team's matter, and team's order matters.

Overall we're excited for next year's race, and some of the writer's here expect to be there in person. Hopefully with the same weather. But we'd understand if it was raining. It's Roubaix at the end of the day. Anything can happen.