Behind the scenes at Paris-Roubaix: What it’s like to report on the most chaotic race of the year

While my bread and butter here at Cyclingnews is the product testing side of things, I do get to sharpen my elbows and report on the pro racing every now and then. So far that experience is limited to the Tour of Flanders, the Criterium du Dauphine, and now Paris Roubaix. Something that keeps coming back to me is that the journalistic work that myself and my colleagues do seems to mirror the character of the racing we are covering. 

Flanders was solid, hard work but it wasn’t necessarily frantic, while the reporting at the Dauphine was positively light and breezy compared to how Roubaix felt. The Queen of the Classics is officially a one-day race (albeit twice, for the men and the women), but from my point of view, it was a three-day frenzy.