At the end of a 45-minute discussion focused on wind direction, feed zones, and tactical plans, Picnic PostNL’s sports director Callum Ferguson decides to strip everything back to basics. Ferguson shuts off VeloViewer, looks across the bus to his team leader, Pfeiffer Georgi, and says: “I want you to tell us what Paris-Roubaix means to you.”
“Oh, God,” the 25-year-old British rider laughs, before quickly reverting to the leadership role she’s adopted for almost the entirety of her pro career.
“This is my dream race to win,” Georgi tells her team. “And it’s a race where I really believe in myself, and I believe in the team. Compared to Flanders, this means way more. And I’ve shown it before, if everything goes right, then we can really go for the podium and the win.
“And if we get the podium, everyone gets a Dyson. And Callum gets a tattoo.”
“Yeah, Callum, you’re getting a tramp stamp,” chips in Georgi’s Australian colleague Lucie Fityus.
That’s one way to motivate your teammates before your biggest race of the year.
Questionable team bets aside, Pfeiffer Georgi’s career has been synonymous with Paris-Roubaix. She’s raced every edition since the women’s version of the Hell of the North was launched in 2021, finishing in the top ten three times. And in 2024, she cracked the podium, sprinting for the win and beating Marianne Vos in the Roubaix velodrome to take a brilliant, emotional third.
So steeped is Paris-Roubaix in the Georgi household that her dad, Peter, makes an annual pilgrimage to the race, with his titanium bike, to follow the team during their recon ride on the cobbles (he held his own well this year, despite suffering on a few sectors).
It’s ironic then that the British star’s first experience of her now-favourite race, that muddy inaugural edition back in 2021, wasn’t exactly favourable.
“The first year I did it, I remember I hated it,” Georgi says of her first Roubaix attempt at that memorable autumnal edition, won by Lizzie Deignan, when she finished 58th.
“It was really wet muddy and I crashed so many times. But I think since then I’ve learned a bit more how to ride the cobbles.”
So, why does the Hell of the North seem to suit Georgi more than some of the other cobbled spring classics?
“You need more power on the flat,” she points out. “It’s a different race to Flanders, for example, with all the uphill sectors. I think I actually prefer the flat cobbles over the climbs.
“I’m really excited actually for Sunday. I think this is my favourite race of the season. Physically I’ve been feeling good in the classics.
“A few things were not quite as I’d like, just with a bit of a bad luck, positioning, but I’m really hoping that everything here goes well.”
Georgi’s seemingly inexorable upward trajectory at Paris-Roubaix – ninth, eighth, and third in consecutive years between 2022 and 2024 – was halted by her 13th place last season, a year which saw her battling the after-effects of her devastating crash at the Tour de France Femmes the previous August.
So far in 2026, the 25-year-old’s spring results have been consistent – she was hovering around the top 15 of the big classics before a relatively disappointing 28th in Flanders – without quite hitting the heights she was achieving before her Tour crash.
But Georgi is confident she’s now as strong as ever, after a year focused on rebuilding her confidence in the bunch.
“I think physically I’m where I want to be,” she says. “I think the results have been a bit underwhelming so far. I’ve not been quite able to show what I’m capable of yet.
“So I’m hoping that I’ve got a chance to do that at Roubaix. And then also in Amstel next week, I’ve got another race.”
She continues: “I think the mental side of it takes longer to get back, just to get the kind of confidence and fearlessness back and being able to take the risk again.
“It was quite a shock to be back into that, like in the environment, my brain just didn’t want to be in that situation again. So that was quite challenging, actually.”
Now firmly established as one of the most experienced, successful riders in a young, increasingly anglophone Picnic team (“we’re having a lot of fun here,” she smiles), Georgi says she is ready to return to the top of the sport at the race she loves the most.
“It would mean a lot to get a result here, especially after the crash at the Tour, even to get the same result as I’ve ever had before.
“I think it would even mean way more just to be able to come back from that, because I think last year there were times where I wasn’t sure if I was going to get back to that same sort of level.
“So, it would definitely mean a lot.”
And if she does achieve her dream of returning to the top at Roubaix, her sports director could soon be eying up some interesting ink designs – a giant cobblestone, maybe?
