For Paris-Roubaix avec Zwift winner Alison Jackson, Saturday’s race represented something of a full-circle moment, despite the Canadian rider not having scored a top result in a cobbled Classic before the race.
Instead, the EF Education-Tibco-SVB rider evoked memories of her childhood on the farm back in Alberta in the post-race press conference. Clutching big rocks – such as the Paris-Roubaix cobblestone trophy – isn’t a new experience for Jackson.
“I grew up on a farm in rural Alberta and one of the things I had to do as a kid was to go to the field and pick rocks by hand and put them in the truck,” Jackson said inside the Jean Stablinski velodrome just across the road from the historic outdoor velodrome which hosts the race finish.
“Lo and behold I’m picking another rock today. My nephews, they’ll go into the backfield and look for rocks to pick and have their own rock collection or just make sure that they’re out of the field so that the farmers don’t run into trouble. I think that they will really love and appreciate this trophy.”
Jackson had spent the race out in the early breakaway which went inside the first 15km of action outside Denain. Usually, a move like that has little chance of staying away to the line at most major Classics, but this one was different.
With Canadian road and time trial titles plus a stage of the Simac Ladies Tour on her palmarès, Jackson was the most decorated rider in the 18-woman break, the move gaining six minutes on the peloton by the time they hit the first cobbled sector at Hornaing with 82km left to run.
It was a large gap, but one most would expect the likes of SD Worx and Trek-Segafredo to deal with ahead of a blockbuster finale. For a while, it looked as though things would turn out that way, though a mass crash in the chase 39km from the finish put paid to that briefly.
A resurgent chase group came within 10 seconds of the break in the final kilometres, but Jackson and the remains of the original move held on to contest the win in Roubaix.
“We were being chased down pretty hard in that last 5km,” Jackson said. “Probably just four of us were actually working in in the group of seven or whatever we had. We came into the velodrome pretty fast.
“I was riding in second wheel and started my sprint at around 300 metres, another girl came around, but I could basically use that as slipstream and go a little higher on the track. Then I had the legs for it to come away with the win.
“I always say I love bike racing. I think…
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