‘Hell of the North’ remains hellish as Paris-Roubaix organisers add new cobbles to gruelling race

By Canadian Press on February 5, 2025.

PARIS (AP) — The Hell of the North gets new cobbles this year.

Organizers of Paris-Roubaix, the gruelling cycling classic over cobblestones held in northern France from April 12-13, said on Wednesday they would add new sections of paving stones.

They will be on the road leading to the infamous Trouée d’Arenberg, a long, straight section of cobbles particularly tough to handle.

“By introducing them here, it provides us with a sequence of five sectors without virtually any tarmac,” said race director Thierry Gouvenou.

Launched in 1896, the Paris-Roubaix is generally filled with punctures, crashes and other drama. It is known in French as the Enfer du Nord — the Hell of the North.

The nickname is said to have been coined in 1919 by a journalist to describe the shelled and destroyed World War One wastelands the race picked its way through. It took that year’s winner, Henri Pelissier, more than 12 hours to reach Roubaix, more than twice as long as it took last year’s male champion Mathieu van der Poel.

This year’s 259.2-kilometre (161 miles) men’s race between Compiègne and Roubaix features 30 cobbled sections covering a total of 55.3 kilometres (34 miles).

Organizers also said they had found an alternative to the controversial chicane that was installed for security reasons last year, to reduce the speed of riders leading into the brutal Trouée d’Arenberg. The sharp U-turn had been criticized by some riders, including van der Poel.

Gouvenou said the new set up “allows us to slow down the riders in a more fluid manner, via a small detour that runs alongside the mining site in Arenberg. With this introduction, there will be four right-angle corners in the kilometre before the Trouée d’Arenberg.”

The route of the 148.5-kilometer women’s race has not been modified. The women’s peloton will tackle the last 17 sections of the men’s race, totalling 29.2 km of cobbles.

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The Associated Press