“Sorry, what are we here for guys, coffee rides or winning the race?” Pfeiffer Georgi playfully chastises her Picnic PostNL teammates, as they prepare to set off on their final training ride before Paris-Roubaix. Everyone laughs, including Georgi herself, but you can tell the British rider is deadly serious.
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The mood, as it has been all weekend, is light in the Picnic camp. A relaxed, almost jovial atmosphere – as well as the distinct odour of nearby industrial waste – permeates the corner of hotel car park the Dutch squad have annexed as their own. The sun is shining, and Bill Withers’ R&B classic Lovely Day booms from the speakers perched up against the mechanic’s truck.
But the light-hearted banter and Googling of prospective café stops have lingered a second too long. There’s a race to win, Georgi points out. And not just any race, either. Paris-Roubaix is 24 hours away, let’s get focused.
For 25-year-old Georgi, the Queen of the Classics looms large over her spring, if not her entire career. 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, entering the velodrome in the lead group and outsprinting Marianne Vos in the Roubaix velodrome to take a brilliant, emotional third.
The three-time British road race champion hasn’t been able to capitalise on that breakthrough pavé performance, however. Her 2024 campaign was abruptly ended in the wake of that devastating crash on stage five of the Tour de France. She spent the next 10 weeks in a neck brace. 2025 was tough, a season focused on rebuilding her form and, mostly importantly, her confidence.
But after a steady if unspectacular start to 2026, Georgi is confident that she’s back to her physical best and, if all goes to plan, she can once again compete for one of those giant decorative cobblestones in the Roubaix velodrome.
Which is why she’s now itching to get on her bike, to tick off the final task on the Roubaix to-do list. A café stop in Denain is quickly decided upon, phones are wedged into back pockets, and the final chorus of Lovely Day is abruptly switched off. The riders clip in, turn right, and make their way through the industrial estate. Paris-Roubaix is fast approaching.
School’s out
It’s lunchtime on the Friday before Paris-Roubaix and the travelling Picnic PostNL circus – consisting of two buses, a truck, a large van, and three team cars – has descended on a dead-end road in The Middle of Nowhere, Northern France (otherwise known as the outskirts of the small town of Solesmes), just 20km from the Belgian border.
The Dutch outfit’s men’s and women’s squads are here, pitched up outside the front gate of the local school, to perform that most sacred of Paris-Roubaix rituals: the pre-race reconnaissance ride. And it’s where I’ve arranged to meet Georgi and her team, with whom I’ll be spending the next two days as they prepare to tackle the Hell of the North.
Rather appropriately, the dead-end road chosen by Picnic’s two teams for their pre-Roubaix rendezvous is the Rue Jean Stablinski, named after the former world champion, Vuelta winner, and key Anquetil lieutenant – and the man who introduced that notorious cobbled path through the Arenberg Forest to Paris-Roubaix’s organisers in the 1960s.
(There are quite a few Jean Stablinski Streets in France, including one a cobblestone’s throw from the Arenberg Trench, overlooked by the imposing mine shafts under which the future four-time French champion worked as a teenager. The one Picnic have picked, consisting of two bland modern buildings, a car park, and a roundabout, doesn’t quite have the same appeal.)
Mechanics flit around assembling bikes and tracksuited riders, including former Roubaix winner John Degenkolb, inspect their work and chat with sports directors. Some local parents, counting down the minutes until pick-up time, take advantage of the opportunity to aimlessly gawp at the fancy cobble-absorbing tech on show in the sunshine.
One class of children, making their way back from rugby practice, gather around the Picnic women’s truck. The team’s Irish champion Mia Griffin, gently coaxed by the class’s enthusiastic teacher, dusts off her French and greets her captive audience of 11-year-olds.
“Est-ce que tu fais du vélo, aussi?” she asks. “Oui, oui,” the kids respond in unison.
“Here it’s very difficult for the young children to ride a bike,” the teacher shrugs, chatting to Griffin in English now. “Even when we talk about Paris-Roubaix, it’s difficult, with the traffic, the roads. It’s not like it is in Belgium.”
He then asks, like any good teacher would, for a group photo. Picnic’s six riders – Griffin, British trio Georgi, Josie Nelson, and Robyn Clay, Australian Lucie Fityus, and Italian Rachele Barbieri – dutifully oblige and pose awkwardly in front of the class. The teacher takes a few snaps on his phone (‘ouistiti!’) and gives the thumbs up, before wishing the team the best of luck for Sunday and heading back to class.
As the riders make their final checks, the squad’s Brummie sports director Callum Ferguson hands me a coffee from the bus – “get a long one, they’re the best,” Griffin recommends – housed in a Picnic-branded cup, and beckons me towards the car. I shove my bags into the boot, mechanic Marcelo shoves himself into the backseat, and off we go.
The plan, Ferguson says, is to cover most of the cobbled sectors the riders will face on Sunday, including the more difficult opening pavé-heavy loop around Denain introduced this year, which he reckons will prove crucial when it comes to positioning.
We head out of the Rue Jean Stablinski and into the open countryside known to cycling fans somewhat unfairly as ‘hell’, where the pan-flat roads are alive this afternoon with the sound of pro bike riders. There’s the EF team, stopping for a mass roadside pee. There’s a Bahrain-Victorious rider in full time trial mode, trying to bridge across to the rest of his team. There’s Mathieu van der Poel, arms folded, looking very grumpy about something.
Two days out from the biggest one-day race of the year, hell is also packed with keen, slightly wobbly amateurs, enjoying the cycling equivalent of having a kick-about at Wembley on the eve of the FA Cup final. Except it’s a lot more painful and bone-rattling.
“Look at this old boy!” laughs Ferguson, as we hit the four-star Haveluy à Wallers sector (a new addition to the women’s race this year) and pass an older gentleman, wearing work trousers, a baseball cap, and a fleece, riding an ancient bike with extremely upright handlebars, vibrating precariously over the cobbles. Talk about an interesting commute.
While that particular ‘old boy’ disappeared rather quickly from the team car’s constantly rattling rearview mirror, the Picnic train featured one permanent passenger in the form of Georgi’s dad Peter and his rather cool titanium bike.
A former European masters scratch champion, Peter is no slouch on the cobbles, his Roubaix recon ride with the team now firmly established as an annual family tradition. For most of the ride, Georgi Snr gamely holds the wheel as his daughter drives the pace at the front, his presence at the back of the group inevitably attracting another unrelated MAMIL, who takes a lengthy, rather cheeky, tow before finally pulling off down a side road.
On one particularly brutal section, Peter is forced to pull the pin, veering to the right as he desperately seeks some respite in the gravelly gutter, provoking some boisterous encouragement from Callum in the car. “He’s cracked earlier than last year,” he informs me. “But he’s digging deep.”
> “I believe I can win Paris-Roubaix”: Pfeiffer Georgi aiming for return to the top at “dream race”
However, that claim was later refuted by Pfeiffer, who says her dad managed to hold on for an extra sector this time around.
“I didn’t see him much this time because he was at the back though, and then he got dropped,” she says. “He enjoys it. And the girls think it’s funny.”
After initially being distanced, a stoic effort on the tarmac sees Georgi Snr use all his track prowess to impressively bridge across to the group… just as they hit the next sector. Boom. You’re on your own now, Peter. That’s the cruelty of Paris-Roubaix for you.
Trapped in the drive-through
Georgi Snr dispatched, we turn left out of a roundabout and Ferguson reaches for a scrap of paper and a pen. He’s noticed that the road narrows here quite a bit more than expected and quickly jots down a note, the steering wheel acting as a makeshift desk.
Rather surprisingly, however, the sports director is sparing when it comes to his mid-recce note taking. Most of the work analysing the route, he says, was completed weeks, even months ago. Instead, the 30-year-old points out that recons, especially ones taking place 48 hours before the race, are mostly useful for filling in the gaps, spotting things that were missed – or maybe didn’t even exist – during those previous deep dives.
The bikes, set up to meet Roubaix’s very specific requirements, are endlessly finetuned, as mechanic Marcelo takes every opportunity to lean out of the car window and ask how the tech is responding to the unique demands of this cobbled hell. “Is the bike okay?” is one of the day’s constant refrains.
And recons are also great for finetuning the riders themselves. For instance, Lucie Fityus, the 25-year-old Australian who signed from St Michel-Auber 93 over the winter, has been struggling with her communication skills over the team radio. So, to build her confidence, she’s the only rider who’s been given a radio today.
“Lucie, how’re you feeling?” Ferguson asks her over the airwaves.
“What?” comes the crackly reply.
“I said…” Ferguson continues, slowly and methodically. “How are you feeling?”
A longer, even more indecipherable crackle punctures the car speakers.
“Lucie,” Callum interjects, “You need to be further from the mic when you speak. I can’t make you out.”
“Sorry, what?”
The second time around, the communication breakdown is sorted. “Is that better?” Fityus asks.
“Yes, much better.” However, Ferguson, a promising cricketer in his youth who still plays for his local thirds team, can’t resist a dig at his natural enemy: the Aussies.
“But next time, you have to speak with a proper accent.”
“Not a problem, I will try my very best,” Fityus responds, in full Mary Poppins mode. Ferguson just shakes his head.
On another sector, the sports director keeps an eye on Josie Nelson, the 24-year-old from Staffordshire who started the season in fine form, taking two podium places at the Tour Down Under and finishing third at the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.
He reckons she’s riding too small a gear on the cobbles. “She’s bouncing around everywhere,” he points out. At an early toilet stop, the sports director pulls Nelson aside for some gearing advice. Bigger gear, more control. But some lessons take time to absorb.
On the next stretch of pavé, Nelson is still being shoved about by the rough terrain. “Lucie,” Ferguson interjects over the radio. “Please tell Josie to use a bigger gear.”
“Sorry, what?”
By the time we exit the sector 15 at Sars-et-Rosières, Ferguson’s mind has drifted onto other more pressing matters. “I’m starving,” he says. “Time for a Big Mac.” It’s been a while since breakfast, so I’m not exactly arguing.
The plan, he insists, is simple. In fact, he even did it during last year’s recon: nip ahead of the riders when there’s a lull between cobbles, drive to the nearest McDonald’s, force mechanic Marcelo to act as look-out, and grab a Happy Meal in time for the squad to pass and you’re on your way. Easy.
Except, this time, Callum’s underestimated one thing: the casual speed at which France’s McDs staff approach their work. “Come on, come on, hurry up,” he mutters, increasingly loudly, as the Peugeot driver in front casually receives their overly large lunch order.
An interminably long wait – and some cursing – later, the big brown bag is in the car. And so is Marcelo, who hasn’t spotted the riders from his look-out position at the retail park’s roundabout. Happy days, we think. Until a few more minutes pass, and the Picnic bunch is nowhere to be seen.
After Callum undertakes a quick search of the nearest village (just in case an impromptu café stop was called), a quick GPS search reveals that the riders are, in fact, up the road. A long way up the road. They’re so far away that Ferguson can’t even reach Fityus over her crackly radio.
“How did they ride so fast?” a bewildered Callum scratches his head (he later discovers that a wrong turn – not the first of the day, mind you – and an inadvertent short cut were behind the unexpected speed).
We may be 48 hours out from Roubaix proper, but the race is now on to reach the team before they make it to the team bus, parked along the route at the recon’s predetermined end point.
“Do you think we’ll catch the breakaway Marcelo?”
“Not a chance.”
He’s right – the next time we see Georgi and co., they’re freewheeling into a layby a few hundred yards from Camphin-en-Pévèle. All that for a Big Mac, eh?
Wisdom Teeth
Riders changed and bikes back on the roof rack, we make our way to the team’s hotel, a bland chain job plonked in an even blander industrial estate seemingly made up entirely of run-down hotels, where the nearest passable restaurant is a 15-minute walk away, past a Tesla charging park (and through a thick mist of sewage).
But since the industrial park is located between Valenciennes and Denain, where the women’s race starts on Sunday, it’s a popular haunt for the budget-conscious peloton. At least half a dozen teams are staying at the park’s vast array of hotels.
My own accommodation is just down the road, and it’s even less appealing than the one I’ve just left. I’m alarmed when I enter my room to find there’s no holder for my shower head. Disgruntled, I walk down to the vending machine (the motel’s only source of food), where I’m joined in the queue by former Cavendish lead-out supremo Michael Mørkøv, on duty with the Danish junior team. He soon thinks better of it. Further down the industrial park, Picnic’s staff are enjoying a barbecue and a few beers.
The atmosphere in the Picnic camp – despite their sports director’s fast-food detour during the recon – is light, relaxed, aided by both the squad’s collective youth and their largely anglophone character. The squad’s Paris-Roubaix line-up, for a race so demanding, is a young one. At 29, Rachele Barbieri is the oldest of the lot, and the only non-native English speaker. Clay, only 22 and in her first year at WorldTour level, is making her Roubaix debut. Only Georgi and Barbieri have started the race more than once.
It’s no surprise, then, that Ferguson stresses the focus is on developing talent. There’s certainly pressure to deliver results (both Picnic’s men’s and women’s teams have struggled on that front this season, failing to land a win in three months of racing. Last year, the women’s team only won four times). But Ferguson understands that, with such a young team at his disposal, the focus has to be on the long term. And not just on numbers, either.
“Take Robyn, for example,” he says during Saturday’s training ride, pointing to Clay, who joined Picnic over the winter following a brilliant season at domestic level with Conti squad DAS-Hutchinson, winning five races, the National Road and National Circuit Series, and finishing second in the U23 national time trial championships.
“Her numbers are good, but they’re maybe not the best. But her mentality is unbelievable. Her first race with us was at the UAE Tour, it was all kicking off in the crosswinds, and she punctured. Other riders would be shouting, panicking.
“But Robyn was super calm, she just got on the radio and said ‘guys, I’ve got a flat’. She gets her wheel changed, gets back to the car, and then says she’ll take some bottles back to the bunch. I gave her a sling and she flew up the side of the peloton. It was so impressive. Like she’d been doing it for years.
“Her mentality is already there, it’s just a case of improving her numbers. She’s definitely a great road captain in the making.”
Clay’s impact on her teammates is already being felt off the bike, too: she’s at the centre of every conversation, every joke. But the Yorkshire rider is also serious about her Roubaix debut. Especially considering she had her wisdom teeth removed just to race the classics.
“I was having issues all winter, taking time off here and there, and went to the UAE Tour, which wasn’t so much fun,” she explains. “It was making me pretty ill. But I came home and got my teeth out – and I had to do it without sedation too, which was rough. It was all pretty rushed, two weeks off, and then I had to build back up for the classics.”
During their pre-Roubaix training ride, Ferguson calls Clay back to the car.
“You okay? How’re you feeling?”
“Okay,” she laughs.
“Nervous?”
“Not yet, but it’ll hit soon enough.”
“When? Tomorrow?”
“Probably tonight, in the briefing.”
Bemused by Ferguson’s line of questioning, she laughs and rides off back to the group. The final training ride, the sports director tells me, is all about gauging his riders’ mental state and how they’re handling the pressure, poking and prodding to focus them on the task at hand.
“I could tell you right now how every single of them will fare tomorrow,” he says.
Griffin, when confronted with the same style of questions, gets straight to the point: “I’m going to fucking stuck in!”
Up ahead, some of the riders are passing the time by blasting out a few of the pop tunes of the day – much to their plainspoken boss’s chagrin. “Oi, no singing!” he shouts.
By the time the team gathers on the bus for their pre-race briefing later that evening, Ferguson has his wish – the atmosphere has shifted. Things have become serious.
VeloViewer fired up, Ferguson runs through the Roubaix rider’s essentials checklist: cobbled sectors, feed zones, wind direction, placement of helpers with spare wheels. Tactical emphasis is placed on positioning as a team, especially early on during that tricky opening loop, to tee up Georgi to be on the front foot in the finale.
The briefing is a democratic one. Everyone has a chance to offer their input but naturally Ferguson and the more experienced riders lead the way. Clay, for once, is noticeably quiet.
Georgi turns to Ferguson: “Can you, when we get to Camphin-en-Pévèle and Carrefour…”
“I know what you’re going to say,” he interjects.
“Well, what am I going to say?”
“That I have to push you to be at the front.”
“Yes, if you have to swear at me or whatever – ‘get to the fucking front right now’. Last year, I was so, so dead. And when I’m on my own, I need that push to make the effort.”
“Don’t give up,” Barbieri tells the group. “Like Pfeiffer last year, you never gave up and you did an amazing comeback after the puncture and the crash.”
“That goes for everyone,” says Ferguson. “Don’t give up.”
Finally, Ferguson decides to end the meeting by stripping everything back to basics. He shuts off VeloViewer, looks across the bus to Georgi, and says: “I want you to tell us what Paris-Roubaix means to you.”
“Oh, God,” the 25-year-old laughs, before effortlessly reverting to the role of calm, composed leader.
“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.”
The whole bus bursts out laughing – except for Ferguson.
“Yeah, Callum, you’re getting a tramp stamp,” Fityus chips in.
“We’ll see,” he says, and walks off the bus.
Radio Nowhere
Denain, wedged against the top internal angle of l’Hexagone, was one of the focal points of France’s nineteenth-century industrial revolution, as coal mining and steelworks transformed the rural village into a bustling centre of industry.
Like most beneficiaries of the industrial revolution around the world, in the last 50 years things have quietened down, the mines and forges closed, and people have left Denain, its population falling by around 30 per cent since the 1970s.
But since 2021, Denain has gained a new lease of life – at least in the cycling world – as the start town of the Paris-Roubaix Femmes, a fitting partnership with a bike race that serves as an annual reminder of the area’s history and heritage.
It’s Sunday lunchtime when I make it to Denain and the town centre is bustling, punters (as well as a journalist or two) taking advantage of the proximity between the local cafés and the sign-on podium, as Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping booms across the square. I don’t mention it to the team, but ‘I get knocked down but I get up again’ could be the motto for Picnic’s spring.
The team buses are quite the walk away from sign-on, and the vibe is very different. Outside the Picnic bus, all six riders are warming up on turbo trainers, heads down, focused, as recommended by Georgi the night before in anticipation of a fast, chaotic start.
And it paid off. Picnic, along with the likes of Visma-Lease a Bike and FDJ United-Suez, were ever-present at the front of the bunch, ‘colour-blocking’, during those tense opening kilometres.
“That was our plan,” Ferguson said later. “We started off in a good way.” The same couldn’t be said for the team car, however.
“Before the race, we always test the radios to make sure they’re working,” he explained after the race. “And all morning, it was fine. But then at kilometre zero, exactly the same channel, it just wasn’t working.”
A quick dash to the organisers’ car during the roll-out secured a new radio. Then, the new radio’s frequency started clashing with the old one – “not so useful” is Ferguson’s understated assessment – filling the car with ear-splitting distortion. And to make matters worse, while all this was going on, a few of the rider’s own radios weren’t working and needed sorting out.
“The first 26, 27km before the opening sector was chaotic. The car was warm, let’s say, and the mechanic in the back was doing more than relaxing, that’s for sure,” Ferguson laughs.
“I don’t think I was stressed, maybe more annoyed at myself. But I’d say my stress levels, compared to the most stressed I’ve ever been in a bike race, were about a seven out of ten.”
(Ferguson, a huge Birmingham City fan, wryly adds that he was more stressed checking how his team was faring against Wrexham earlier in the day.)
Those stress levels rocketed close to football-watching levels when Fityus sustained an ill-timed puncture before her wheel got stuck in a verge, sending the Australian clattering to the ground and leaving her with a dislocated shoulder.
Shoulder popped back in, Ferguson – now a long way away from the peloton – was helping Fityus back to the front when the call came through from Georgi for a bottle.
“We were maybe 5km from the front and right then, the stress was quite high. When a rider needs something, it’s easy to say, ‘get it from the side of the road’. But they could be on the other side of the road, it could be quite fast, and you know when someone like Pfeiffer is asking for something, they need it. That 20, 30 minutes were quite stressful, maybe an eight or an eight-and-a-half there.”
Fityus, meanwhile, carried on to the finish in Roubaix, the 94th rider to cross the line in the velodrome, five minutes outside the time limit.
> Letters forwarded from Hell: Paris-Roubaix, in the words of the pros
Up ahead, Georgi was the sole Picnic rider who made the split following a mass pile-up at the end of the Orchies sector with around 60km to go.
Despite looking and feeling strong, old habits died hard for the British rider, and she found herself loitering at the back of the group when the winning move, containing Visma duo Marianne Vos and Pauline Ferrand-Prévot and FDJ’s eventual winner Franzi Koch, went up the road.
Georgi swooped right into the velodrome in the group sprinting for sixth place, but a finale where she was always playing catch-up and burning matches meant she had to settle for 14th, her lowest position at Roubaix since her debut.
“We are disappointed,” Ferguson admits. “I think Pfieffer looked quite fresh in the end and still had a lot more to give. It’s one of those. 14th is not what we’re aiming for. So we’re going home with a bittersweet feeling. Because up to a certain point, everything went well.”
As she greets her family at the team bus, Georgi looks deflated, the ‘what might have beens’ running through her mind following a spring of frustrating near misses. 13th at Binda, 11th at Sanremo, 12th in Wevelgem, 28th at Flanders, and 14th in Roubaix – all solid results, but certainly not what she was aiming for at the start of the year.
That sense of frustration and deflation can be felt throughout the Picnic bus, but Ferguson is keen to retain a sense of perspective on the squad’s classics campaign.
“For us, the result isn’t the most important thing. We believe if we do the process the right way, the results will come. For Pfeiffer, for the classics, maybe one or two things were missing from the team to get the results.
“We’re missing the big results, but if you look at the first cobbled classics – where five of the six were brand-new riders, and one or two it was their first WorldTour races – and where we are now, the process has come really far,” he points out.
“How we sit with each other when it’s easy, when it’s hard, how we communicate, how we take nutrition, all the basics are now on a really high level. It will take time, but as long as there’s progress and the drive to do more, good things will come.”
Ferguson also believes the camaraderie and togetherness of his young team will stand them in good stead as they continue to develop together.
“You can see we’re really close. At the UAE Tour, we were always the last at the dinner table by half an hour. When we trained on the bike paths there, every team would go past silent, but we were always chattering, talking.
“If we stay like that, and really make the effort for each other, only good things will come. I believe we have a hardworking team who wants more. They all want to help each other and strive to be better.”
16 minutes and 40 seconds after Franzi Koch outsprinted Marianne Vos to secure a stunning maiden victory at the Hell of the North, Picnic’s Roubaix debutant Robyn Clay crossed the finish line in the velodrome in 89th place.
“I’m exhausted. It’s such a crazy experience. I’m quite lost for words,” the 22-year-old admits as I catch up with her in the track centre.
“For me, today was not so good, but yeah, I think the team did really well at the start, taking control of the race and then eventually it’s just down to the leader and what she can do. But I think we’ve learned a lot.
“It’s always different when you’re following riders you don’t know versus your teammates, like in the recon. And we didn’t do all 20 sectors in training! As it goes on, your forearms are just on fire with every cobble sector. And also with the racing position, just everything is more painful.
“It was all guns blazing from the start. It was almost if you didn’t line up early, you weren’t ever going to get to the front. Luckily, we lined up early and we held the right side the whole start of the race.
“What have I learned? Get some stronger legs!”
As I’m speaking to Clay, the news emerges that she finished inside the time cut – by just nine seconds.
“I kept riding hard all day, because either way it’s a good training day,” she laughs. “To be honest, I thought I’d be out of the time limit, so that’s nice I’m not.”
In other words, she never gave up.
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