Human Powered Health takes to the pavé of Northern France for the highpoint of the cobble Classic season, the Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift on April 12.
The Monument, both affectionately and disparagingly known as ‘Hell of the North’ is arguably the world’s toughest one-day bike race. 148.5km from Denain to the iconic Vélodrome André-Pétrieux, the peloton takes on 17 sectors totaling 30 km of bike – and athlete – rattling cobbles.
A race unlike any other; to do well at Paris-Roubaix, you need to have both strength of body and mind, a strong team and staff around you, ironclad tactics, and a whole heap of luck.
The roster ready to do battle is Lily Williams, second-place finisher in 2023 Katia Ragusa, Romy Kasper, Maggie Coles-Lyster, Kathrin Schweinberger, and Giada Borghesi.
How to watch
USA
NBC Sports’ Peacock | from 8:40 am ET / 7:40 am CT / 6:40 am MT / 5:40 am PT
Canada
FloBikes
UK
TNT Sports/Discovery+ online | from 13:30 GMT
Belgium
Sporza/VRT1 | from 14:25 CET
Europe
Eurosport/Discovery+ | from 14:30 CET
Since its inception in a deluge in 2021, Paris-Roubaix Femmes has had four storied editions, and Romy Kasper has been at every start line.
“I probably will never be done with this race unless I win it,” Kasper said in Paris-Roubaix Femmes week. “I would have loved another wet one, but I’m looking forward to it; anything can happen. The finish is on the finish line; if you crash, you get up and go again. If you puncture, you get a new wheel and go again. This is always in my mind.”
Kasper finished 18th in that first edition and credits the existence of a Paris-Roubaix for women to extending her career.
“I needed to keep racing until I could ride it,” she explains. “But now I can’t stop racing because I just love this race. Any rider can win; it’s not a race that you can predict so easily. You can profit from your teammates, but from one point on, it is more or less one-on-one with your next competitor.”
Kasper is a Roubaix aficionado and knows the route like the back of her hand. Before the race, the team has stayed within walking distance of one of the sectors, and the 36-year-old can be known to go out and tread the pavè like a dancer rehearsing their steps.
“I like when the sectors come close to each other and there’s not much time to recover,” she says. “It all then goes into one when you race. I will have the names on my handlebars, but I know them so well. During my dreams, I could tell you which one comes next and how we enter them and how we exit them.”
With a quality team and Factor OSTRO VAM machine, anything is possible.
“I’ve done many recons and four times racing it, so maybe five will be my lucky number.”
The five-star beasts
The pavé sectors in Paris-Roubaix all have a star rating that corresponds to their difficulty, judged on the length and condition of the cobbled stretches. On Saturday, two of the 17 are judged to have a brutish five-star rating.
Mons-en-Pévèle
At three kilometers, Mons-en-Pévèle is the second longest of the sectors and can make or break the race. With a large camber, rough cobbles, corners, and potholes throughout, it’s more of an obstacle course than a road. 48.6 km from the velodrome, as the aldage goes, you might not win the race here, but you can certainly lose it.
Carrefour de l’Arbre
A name sure to strike fear or excitement in the peloton, Carrefour de l’Arbre is a famed sector that often creates the selection that will take it to the line. For the majority of the race, to do well, riders will need to be in the front 10-15 from the first sector of pavé at Hornaing à Wandignies, all the way to the finale. This makes the race into the sectors as big of a battle as the cobbles themselves. Carrefour is no different, and with a tight corner on its entry, a charging attack can do just that.
Make sure to catch the racing live and keep track of the team across our social media channels.
