On a chaotic day on the cobbles of northern France, Canada’s Alison Jackson proved the strongest remaining member of a large early breakaway which made it all the way to the Roubaix velodrome to secure a career-defining win at the Hell of the North.
At the end of what will certainly prove an unforgettable edition of Paris-Roubaix, EF Education-TIBCO-SVB’s Jackson proved instrumental in ensuring that her breakaway companions stayed clear (just) of an all-star chasing group which included Lotte Kopecky, Marianne Vos, and Pfeiffer Georgi.
Then, in the final lap of Roubaix’s iconic track, the 34-year-old Canadian had enough in the legs to come around the fading Marion Borras before holding off Liv Racing’s Katia Ragusa in the dying metres for a popular – and surprise – victory, as 23-year-old Marthe Truyen secured the final step on the podium.
Just 12 seconds behind the seemingly untiring Jackson and her battling breakaway colleagues, Kopecky – bearing the scars of a race-altering crash on the cobbles with around 40km to go – beat the courageous Georgi for eighth place.
While the Tour of Flanders winner may rue that crash, which potentially dashed her hopes of a historic Ronde-Roubaix double, no-one can deny Jackson – who had enough energy to perform her trademark victory dance in the velodrome – her place in cycling history.
How the race unfolded
Almost the entirety of the race was defined by that 18-rider-strong early breakaway, formed with around 120km to go, which featured Canyon-Sram’s British champion Alice Towers, Lisa Klein, Alison Jackson, and Susanne Andersen, and built up an extremely dangerous six-minute advantage over the main favourites.
While the breakaway – occasionally punctuated by lone attacks from Team DSM’s strong 20-year-old Daniek Hangeveld and, later, the effervescent Canadian Jackson – irrevocably shaped the race from the front, Marianne Vos’s second crack at Roubaix proved largely a case of playing catch-up from the back.
An early puncture and a bike change ensured that the legendary Dutchwoman spent the majority of the race chasing to regain contact with the main favourites, who themselves appeared constantly in danger of sleep-riding to a surprise breakaway win, with only the work of Trek-Segafredo’s former world champion Elisa Balsamo doing anything to shift the substantial gap to the lead group during the first two-thirds of the race.
But the 2023 Paris-Roubaix reached its first definitive turning point with 50km to go when SD Worx’s pre-race favourite Lotte Kopecky, aiming for a historic Tour of Flanders and Roubaix double, launched an attack – just like last year – on the Auchy-les-Orchies à Bersée sector.
Kopecky’s attack, which was immediately followed by a crash which brought down Elynor Bäckstedt and Charlotte Kool, dragged clear a stellar group of riders, including defending champion Elisa Longo-Borghini, Pfeiffer Georgi, Lucinda Brand, Elise Chabbey, Floortje Mackaij, and Chiara Consonni.
Following a gradual, small regrouping on Mons-en-Pévèle, the race then took arguably its most defining turn with 37km to go, when Longo Borghini slid out on the muddy, greasy cobbles at Pont-Thibault à Ennevelin.
The Italian lost control of her bike and hit the cobbles hard, causing a massive, dramatic pile-up which affected almost every single rider in her all-star group, with Kopecky and teammate Lorena Wiebes seemingly among the worst affected by the horrendous spill.
Indeed, Kopecky, the mud splattered down her left-hand side, initially seemed to struggle in the immediate aftermath of the crash.
But the irrepressible Belgian, well aware that classics history was within her grasp, soon grabbed the race by the scruff of the neck, drilling it at the front of Vos’s group to regain contact with the main favourites and, in the process, ensuring the Jumbo-Visma star – looking to write yet another chapter in her unmatchable cycling opus – finally made it to the pointy end of the race.
Meanwhile, former British champion Georgi demonstrated her clear strength, launching a few stinging digs – once on Camphin-en-Pévèle and then on the tarmac – in a bid to repeat her late attacking heroics at Brugge-De Panne a few weeks ago.
Amidst all the chaos and ever-changing tactical permutations, the remnants of the morning break – pushed on by the seemingly indefatigable Jackson – remained 20 seconds clear with five kilometres to go, as Trek-Segafredo’s cyclocross star Lucinda Brand, and then Canyon-Sram’s Chabbey, attacked from the second group, each to no avail, however.
A strong Longo Borghini move was immediately snuffed out by Kopecky, before the defending champion – knowing her own chances of victory were gone – went to work on the front.
But this most dramatic edition of Paris-Roubaix was always destined to go right down to the wire on the famous old velodrome – and, with the favourites languishing behind, albeit within touching distance, it proved the day of the break, with Jackson emerging as the strongest from a tough, gritty sprint (which also saw Femke Markus hit the boards after a touch of wheels) to take an astonishing career-defining win.
“When we did the pre-ride and I rode around this velodrome, I dreamed of winning. But a lot of the time those dreams just stay dreams. It’s unreal to make it happen,” a beaming Jackson, whose victory at the Queen of the Classics is only the eighth of a pro career which has seen her secure stages at the Tour of Scotland and Simac Ladies Tour, as well as national titles in the road race and time trial.
“I wanted to be part of the action, I wanted to be ahead of the race, I didn’t want to wait. Our team for this spring has just been waiting, and it hasn’t been working.
“Because we had a bit of rain earlier in the week, it was going to be slick out there. And in a race like this, you just need to avoid bad luck in order to get good luck and a win.
“It’s a dream come true. To cross the finish line first of any bike race is a special kind of fun, but this one tops that.”
10 thoughts on “Alison Jackson sprints to career-defining win at chaotic Paris-Roubaix, after huge race-altering crash takes down nearly all of the favourites”
Jackson an absolute deserved
Jackson an absolute deserved winner from that breakaway group and whilst it had entertainment, Im not sure it will be remembered as a classic race in the years to come, not least by some of those riders in the chase group who literally seemed to give up the chase whilst focusing just on their own dreams of victory and forgetting to finish first, you first must get to the finish first.
can I also point out the race winning move & breakaway happened before the ASO/broadcasters deemed it was neccessary to show live tv pictures of the race, in fact they barely got going as the breakaway passed through the 1st cobbled sector.
Awavey wrote:
Confounded as to why with the camera crews etc presumably already in place for the weekend they couldn’t show wire-to-wire coverage as they are for the men’s today.
me neither, is the cost of
me neither, is the cost of that extra 1hr20mins of broadcast really that incremental ? I mean did you see the thing that came after, 2hrs live coverage of some strange indoor triathlon where the running and walking parts were on zwift and they swam in a pool !?! how does that stuff get live flipping coverage, whilst we were left scrabbling around social media with the ASO/broadcasters using the tags #WatchTheFemmes (oh no we cant) to find out whats going on
and Eurosport are driving me up the wall with their coverage, watch the race live from 2pm, no watch us talk for 20mins first again about such interesting topics as what is a cobbled sector, whilst promising you, you wont miss any of the action, which we are because youre just talking whilst theres a race happening NOW!!!, and they did miss the first cobbled sector.
Could it be the cost of
Could it be the cost of keeping the uplink helicopters airborne for the early part?
the aircraft would have had
the aircraft would have had to be up following the race anyway from the start, the mens race have got 3 tracking them,they cant just turn up on spec, and theyd want to be collecting the pictures from all the camera bikes, to form a highlights package at the very least from it.
It will be the broadcast network links to pump their feed into the worldwide tv network that ASO didnt want to pay the extra 1hr20mins for to book and none of the broadcasters wanted to pay for it either, so we got nothing.
even though we live in an age where anyone with a camera and a 5g sim can stream content in 4k live on youtube and it be profitable for them to do it to cover the data cost even if they only have a couple of thousand people viewing it at one time
of course the broadcasters would hate that because it then ruins their control over what you get to watch.
mark1a wrote:
According to Cycling Weekly last year the total cost of keeping one helicopter going is £7000 per day, so at a rough estimate having three filming the whole of the Femmes (assuming they weren’t, as Awavey says they were probably doing so anyway) would have been £10-15k more than the last few hours, surely not an unfindable cost in the context of the massive global live broadcast the whole weekend entailed?
To be fair, there are very
To be fair, there are very few races, men’s or women’s that show the whole race live.
It all comes down to money at the end of the day. How many people want to watch the opening couple of hours for advertisers to advertise to, and how many other sports, with their potentially larger audience will provide greater advertising revenues, can be broadcast during that period instead?
Totally agree about the tactics though. The race was there to be won, but no one was able / willing to put it on the line for the chance.
I thought about this post race, and having been initially frustrated by what I’d say has been a consistent tactical (non)play by the hitters throughout the classics this year, I think in this case, the make up of the break was the reason for its success.
Every surviving member of the break would happily take 7th, so everyone just kept pulling. Also, it wasn’t second rate teams up front, so other than Trek, who behind had an obligation to chase? And for those riders behind, are you going to risk the chance of your team mate (ahead) pulling off the big one, by fulling committing to closing the gap? no you are not.
This for me was a team director issue, the break should not have been let go in the first place. But, this is only the 3rd edition of this race, all this stuff is easy in hindsight.
Its Paris Roubaix though, it
Its Paris Roubaix though, it’s not some minor race few have heard of like the Ronde de Mouscron, I’m sure mens cycling fans would complain loudly if they missed about 1/3rd of their race. I havent watched the highlights to see if they included any of the bits we missed as the breakaway forming was key to the result.
I get the money issue, I just dont get the logic they use to justify it when they spend equivalent sums of money to show things you have to question are they really better for their audiences or sponsors ? Indoor triathlons seems a very niche sport to cover live for instance.
For all of those who don’t
For all of those who don’t stream or subscribe, Quest have just shown highlights of the women’s, and the men’s tomorrow at 11.
A totally exciting race with
A totally exciting race with a well deserved winner. Very cool.