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With no Queen of the Classics on today, let's travel back in time, and consider what Paris-Roubaix looked like one hundred years ago.
Back then, road racing was not the be all and end all of cycling. All the cool kids raced on the track.
And the greatest events on the track were the Six Day races. Brussels had already had its Six (31/1-6/2), as had New York (7-12/3). Paris was about to get its (28/3-2/4), the day after Roubaix.
That man Oscar Egg - hero of the Hour, veteran of the Tour and the Giro, inventor of some seriously daft aerodynamic innovations - went on to win the Paris Six, with his partner Georges Sérès who mostly rode motor-paced events on the track.
As well as the cover, the Miroir gave four pages to reporting the Paris 6. The week before, Paris-Roubaix had only merited the cover and a single page of reporting.
Another idea of how different road racing then was is that Paris-Roubaix was effectively opening the season, with Milan-Sanremo following.
There had been road races before Paris-Roubaix, but they weren't considered all that important. They were sort of like those Australian races we get today. Unimportant leg looseners. One of them was the Ronde (13/3), not yet established as a key target for the stars of the sport.
Even the race then looked very, very different to what it does today. Most of it took place far to the west of where the course runs today. As Benjo Maso explains in 'Sweat of the Gods', "today's Paris-Roubaix is a reconstruction of a past that has never existed."
Don't confuse that dose of reality with cynicism. The opposite is true. Here's Maso again:
Another difference between then and now is the size of the caravan, with L'Auto boasting that ten - TEN! - cars would follow the race: three for race officials, three for teams, and four for media.
The three cars for teams needs comment. After the war the major manufacturers in France ganged up and formed a cartel, La Sportive, which basically allowed them to keep riders' wages low. Some manufacturers broke ranks - JB Louvet most famously - and paid more for riders.
Going into the race, the defending champion was Paul Deman, an old school Flandrien whose palmarès already included the Ronde (1913) + Bordeaux-Paris (1914). L'Auto offered this pencilled portrait of him.
Here's the race's Roll of Honour as it stood then. Lapize and Faber you know all about. Charles Crupelandt? Famously, the first local boy to win in Roubaix. Scandalously, refused a licence after the war for crimes alleged to have been committed during it.
Crupelandt is also the star of one of Jean Metzinger's paintings.
A hundred sixty-something riders committed to ride the race, two dozen of whom ended up being DNS.
The race was expected to taken about ten hours to complete, compared with the six hours it takes today. The start was at half past silly o'clock, which is no hour for decent people to be about of a Sunday, unless they're on their way home.
Finally in the preamble, one other major difference between then + now: Paris-Roubaix had hills, as this elevation profile provided to La Vie au Grand Air's readers shows. The bump between Doullens + Arras on the second part of the graphic was often the key phase of the race.
And on to the racing! We pick up the action with the time getting on for eight-thirty, on the approach to Méru (km 56), on one of those hills we've just mentioned, the côte de Robinson. At the front of the race there's about 90 of the 140 starters. And quite a lot fans.
Over the top of the climb one man goes clear alone, Jules Masselis, another of those Flandriens whose career was curtailed by the war. Twice he won stages in the Tour (1911 + 1913) and with them took the race lead. This is him a decade before, at the start of Paris-Roubaix 1911.
As we approach Beauvais (km 82) Masselis has a slender lead, two minutes, and about 30 riders have been shelled out the back of the chasing pack, reducing the peloton to 60 or so riders.
It's now about nine-thirty and Masselis is still dangling two minutes or so off the front as the 60-strong peloton exits Beauvais, where they've had to stop to sign in and stock up on food and drink.
Finally we get a first glimpse of Masselis, alone on the road to Amiens (km 144). His lead had ballooned to six minutes at Breteuil (km 112) but is now shrinking fast as the peloton, down to 40-something riders, starts winding up the pace.
The peloton as they close on Masselis, led by Jules van Hevel, another son of Flanders, this one riding for the Italian Bianchi squad.
It's eleven-thirty or so. Masselis is toast, caught and dropped, as the peloton whizzes through Amiens (km 144) where the crowds are thronging the streets.
Amiens again. Most all the pix up to now have been from the Miroir. This is from La Vie au Grand Air.
Back to that elevation profile from earlier, repeating the first half of the race but with names attached to the numbers:
8 Jules Masselis
1 Henri Pélissier
(winner 1919)
2 Francis Pélissier
3 René Vermandel (hot off victory in the Ronde)
4 Romain Bellenger
8 Jules Masselis
1 Henri Pélissier
(winner 1919)2 Francis Pélissier
3 René Vermandel
(hot off victory in the Ronde)4 Romain Bellenger
At Doullens (km 174), before the climb that was then what the Arenberg is today, the Pelissiers have clipped off the front with half a dozen others. A quartet of chasers are a minute in arrears, what's left of the peloton another minute back. And then they hit the climb.
On the left in that pic is Henri Pélissier (who'd have a comment worth printing on the new rules against tossing bidons) on the right is Romain Bellenger. Francis Pélissier is behind, Varmandel further back. And here's Maso again, briefly mentioning the importance of the climb.
(If you haven't read Maso ... you bloody well should.)
Repeating Maso in that quote, the real pavé only kicked in as you neared Roubaix + even then riders avoided it where they could. Here we're somewhere after Hénin-Liétard (km 227) with the Pélissiers, Hector Tiberghien, Jules Vermandel + Léon Scieur on the pavement, not the pavé.
Vienne + Perez was lost to the war and the race was finishing in the stad Jean-Dubrulle. An enormous crowd was there to see the finish, L'Auto tells us. And the first rider they saw was Henri Pélissier, taking his second win in Roubaix. His brother, Francis, followed 40" behind.
An enormous crowd was there to see the finish? Yes. But they were also there to see a football match, which the arrival of the Pélissier brothers halted.
The greyhound triumphs, trumpeted L'Auto, whose editor, the master mythologizer Henri Desgrange, had a tempestuous, love/hate relationship with the eldest Pélissier (and we'll draw a discreet veil over the relationship with the youngest).
To close, some words of wisdom Pélissier imparted to L'Auto's readers: "Paris-Roubaix is above all an acrobatic race in which it is less a question of going fast than of not falling off." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
