Paris-Roubaix 2015

The road

How it was won

1. 196 km to go

   A dry Arenberg, and Thomas at the back of it

   Sun and a tailwind have made this a brutally fast edition, and the trench punishes in a different way: no mud, no pile-ups, just speed and hammering. Geraint Thomas punctures in the last kilometre before the forest and enters the pavé at the very back of the bunch. BMC lead the field in, five minutes down on the nine leaders, and a huge group rattles out the far end still intact.

2. 291 km to go

   The barriers come down at Wallers

   Barely two kilometres past the forest the lights start flashing and the barriers drop. Three quarters of the peloton ignore them and slalom over the rails; a TGV passes moments later. The jury sends motorbikes to the front to hold the race up until the riders who stopped are back on.

3. 372 km to go

   Etixx open the crosswinds

   Etixx-QuickStep make their first real surge on Tilloy to Sars-et-Rosières, and the damage is done the moment the road turns right off the cobbles into the wind. Five of them line it out; Van Avermaet and Kristoff are stuck in the second echelon and Wiggins is further back still. All of them spend the next half hour dragging themselves back.

4. 449 km to go

   Forty left on Mons-en-Pévèle

   Sagan has already lit it up on Auchy-lez-Orchies, and a crash at the gates of sector ten takes his teammate Matti Breschel and the 2011 winner Johan Vansummeren out of the race. About forty riders reach the crown of Mons-en-Pévèle, where Stijn Vandenbergh throws in a savage acceleration into yet another crosswind and rides away alone.

5. 533 km to go

   Wiggins jumps at Moulin de Vertain

   Five hundred metres of cobbles beside the old mill, and Bradley Wiggins uses every one of them, coming out alone and reaching Vandenbergh in no time at all. Jens Debusschere and Zdeněk Štybar scramble across; the favourite is finally where a favourite should be.

6. 616 km to go

   Boom detonates the Carrefour de l'Arbre

   Everything has come back together — Katusha hauled in Wiggins before Cysoing, and Terpstra's dig on Bourghelles only dragged a select group up to the leaders — so twenty riders turn onto the worst cobbles in France with Jürgen Roelandts a handful of seconds up the road. Then Lars Boom stands on the pedals. He rides the crown of the Arbre like a man who has decided the race ends here, the group behind him snaps into a line of individuals, and Roelandts' advantage is gone within two kilometres. In the lull that follows, Van Avermaet and Yves Lampaert jump clear; Bert De Backer, calm as anything, keeps John Degenkolb in the first three wheels.

7. 7At the line

   Degenkolb wins on the track

   Štybar bridges, then Boom, Elmiger and Keukeleire, and seven riders reach the gentle last cobbles of the Espace Charles Crupelandt together. With Sagan and Kristoff long gone, Degenkolb is plainly the fastest man there; he holds his place around the concrete and opens up out of the last banking. Three weeks after San Remo, a second Monument of the spring, from Štybar and Van Avermaet.

The result