Editorial

It’s not a grand cycling race like certain others. No great, top level champions have ever been seen at the start in Compiègne, whether current champions like Lance Armstrong, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso or former champions like Richard Virenque, Miguel Indurain and Gianni Bugno.

Their field of expertise doesn’t cover the ardent mental aptitude that welcomes «doing battle» with a hostile route that is trussed up into some twenty seven cobblestone sections, that breaks bodies and necessitates a will of iron, perhaps even a touch of masochism…
And yet the sport of cycling is such that Paris-Roubaix, more than ever before, holds a particular fascination. At times, men of little renown, at the price – literally! – of an inordinate passion for this type of competition have here won fame and praise: Marc Madiot, Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle, Andrea Tafi. Affection for the cobblestone sections overrides any amount of suffering: an admirable and tough conviction!
Paris-Roubaix is hence not a grand cycling race like certain others and yet it is a finer race than many others, in terms of its extraordinary dimension and the values it demands, which at times seem to call upon the past: tenacity, daring, heroism. Is this such a paradox if we acknowledge that the tough and the fine can exist harmoniously together?
In terms also of its social context as it has been adopted by an entire population, like a sort of regional ritual celebration that takes place on the second Sunday in April every year, the personification of a land and a culture. Isn’t this reflected in the commitment of the Northern r epresentatives to invest in the preservation of the Arenberg Trench, renovated and rendered easier to pass?
To conclude, a well renowned sports event can no longer be conveyed without pictures, and pictures transmitted via television are inevitably charged with emotion. Hence is the framework of an incomparable real life drama produced by combining this inevitable media form with this hostile terrain and these frenzied athletes.
Yes, Jacques Goddet’s definition of the race forty years earlier holds true today: « the ultimate folly that the sport of cycling proposes to its participants ».
On Sunday the 9th of April, in the morning in Compiègne, and then later lining the roads of the Valenciennois, the Pévèle and the Mélantois areas, thousands will participate in this festive manifestation, the pride of a sport and a region.
For the 40th year running I will be faithfully present and confident of a powerful feeling of inner joy at approximately 5.30 p.m., at the side of the concrete track in the Roubaix Velodrome, when the heroes of the day dot the arena, exhausted but admirable.

Jean-Marie Leblanc

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