John Degenkolb has been there, done it, and got the t-shirt at Paris-Roubaix. The 2015 winner is one of the veterans of the cobbled Classics peloton and still a name people look to in Compiègne, even if he heads towards the twilight years of his career.
But still, it had been some time since the German was at the sharp end of the Hell of the North before his ride on Sunday afternoon. A top 10 in 2017 was his best result before racing to seventh at this, his 11th participation.
It’s all the more bitter, then, that his best result in eight years could have been even better. Degenkolb’s time at the front of the race came to an abrupt end with a crash on the Carrefour de l’Arbre just 16.5km from the line.
Riding in the gutter at the side of the road, the 34-year-old found himself with nowhere to go when Alpecin-Deceuninck pair Jasper Philipsen and Mathieu van der Poel shifted across to his side of the road.
Caught between the men who would go on to finish one-two in the Roubaix velodrome and the roadside spectators, Degenkolb would be denied a chance to contest the final, instead racing home 2:35 down.
“Well, I mean, it’s hard to remember,” Degenkolb said after the finish, struggling to find the words to describe his race.
“I know that I was on the right side and then suddenly – actually first Philipsen moved to the right and I was already on the right side and in the ditch there.
“And then also Mathieu squeezed himself through and pushed me basically into – yeah, there was no space anymore for me – into the spectators on the side of the road. I crashed. That’s all I can say.”
Though he was disappointed that a chance to contest for another Roubaix cobblestone or a podium spot had been snatched away from him, Degenkolb admitted that he wasn’t the strongest man in the group. But “Roubaix is Roubaix” as the maxim goes, he reminded the press present at the finish.
“I mean, I was for sure not the strongest in that group. But Roubaix is Roubaix, and anything can happen once you’re in that group so close to the final,” Degenkolb said, before going on to recuse himself from further comment on the incident without first watching the television footage.
“I don’t want to say something now because I haven’t seen the images yet. It’s hard to remember,” he said.
Degenkolb hit the ground hard on his left shoulder before quickly…
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