Paris-Roubaix 2012

The road

At the start

No Cancellara, and Boonen in full flight

Compiègne, rain in the forecast, and twenty-seven sectors of pavé between here and the velodrome. Fabian Cancellara, who should have been the favourite, is at home with a collarbone broken in four places at the Ronde. That leaves Tom Boonen, who has already taken E3, Gent-Wevelgem and Flanders this spring and needs one more Roubaix to draw level with De Vlaeminck. Everyone else is here to stop him.

How it was won

1. 186 km to go

   Into the Trouée

   Sky drive the bunch at the forest at a speed nobody can steer at, and the entry to the trench is carnage: Janorschke goes down hard and takes Popovych and Van Keirsbulck with him. Ahead of the wreckage Tom Boonen is already on the front, setting the pace himself, with Chavanel coming up to help.

2. 260 km to go

   Boonen and Pozzato bridge at Orchies

   Chavanel slips clear with Turgot, Ladagnous, Mangel and Schär, and when Chavanel punctures, Turgot goes on alone over the Orchies cobbles. Behind, Boonen accelerates out of the bunch and only Filippo Pozzato can go with him. By the end of the sector it is five men in front.

3. 354 km to go

   Boonen goes, and nobody comes

   Omega Pharma-QuickStep spring the trap: Boonen rides off the front of the leading group with Niki Terpstra for company. Then the five stars of Auchy-lez-Orchies to Bersée arrive, and Terpstra — his own lieutenant, one of the strongest cobbled riders alive — simply cannot hold the wheel. Boonen comes off the far end of that sector alone, with fifty kilometres of northern France still to cross, and rides the rest of Paris-Roubaix by himself.

4. 449 km to go

   Mons-en-Pévèle

   Three kilometres of the worst pavé in the race, and Boonen crosses it as if it were a training road. Behind him the chase falls apart — Pozzato misjudges a corner, takes Devolder down with him, and half a minute becomes a settled fact.

5. 527 km to go

   The minute

   On the cobbles from Cysoing to Bourghelles, twenty-seven kilometres out, the gap finally clicks past a minute. Behind, Flecha, Boom, Ballan and Vansummeren all try, and Terpstra sits in the chase closing every single one of them down for his leader.

6. 617 km to go

   Boom's counter dies on the Arbre

   Lars Boom changes bikes, comes storming past the chasers and attacks alone into Camphin and the Carrefour de l'Arbre. It is the only moment all afternoon the gap comes down. Boonen finishes the sector still a minute and ten ahead, and the four behind stop racing for the win.

7. 7At the line

   Fourth Roubaix, alone

   Boonen has the velodrome to himself for a lap and a half, grinning at the cameras with three kilometres still to ride. A fourth Paris-Roubaix, level with Roger De Vlaeminck, and the last fifty-two kilometres of it ridden without another rider in sight.

The result