Paris-Roubaix 2025

The road

At the start

Pogačar's first Hell of the North

Compiègne, and the question is whether a world champion can take the Hell of the North at the first attempt. Tadej Pogačar arrives off victory at the Tour of Flanders a week ago; Mathieu van der Poel arrives off a crash and an illness in that same run-in, third on the day, and rides for a third Roubaix in a row. Behind them Jasper Philipsen, runner-up here two years running, waits.

How it was won

1. 195 km to go

   Trouée d'Arenberg

   The cobbles plunge dead-straight through the forest gloom. Pogačar and Van der Poel surge across the Haveluy and into Arenberg, the front group collapses to fifteen, and the morning breakaway is swallowed whole.

2. 271 km to go

   Pogačar's first hammer-blow

   On the Tilloy sector, 72km from home, the world champion unleashes a searing attack. Only Van der Poel and Jasper Philipsen can hold him — and Mads Pedersen punctures at the cruellest possible second.

3. 348 km to go

   Mons-en-Pévèle

   Five stars, the longest sector of all. Pogačar punches twice and Philipsen finally cracks. Now it is just the two best riders in the world, riding an uneasy truce toward the velodrome.

4. 438 km to go

   The corner that decided Roubaix

   An easy right-hander, 38km out on sector 9 — and Pogačar misjudges it, sliding across the pavé. Chain off, blood on his wrist, twenty seconds lost to a bike change. Van der Poel is suddenly alone.

5. 517 km to go

   Carrefour de l'Arbre

   On the cruellest sector of all, a roadside spectator hurls a bottle at his face, and moments later his own team car flattens his punctured bike behind him. Van der Poel barely flinches.

6. 6At the line

   The Roubaix velodrome

   Three fingers raised to the sky: a third straight Paris-Roubaix and the eighth Monument of his career — the first rider since Francesco Moser in 1980 to win the Hell of the North three years running.

The result