Wickedly straight, fiendishly long, and riddled with the kind of brutal pavé former Tour de France organiser Jacques Goddet described as “potholes, not cobblestones”, the Arenberg Forest, Paris-Roubaix’s first five-star sector, is difficult enough.

But this year, the infamous Trouée d’Arenberg has been made even more difficult by a rather niche subsection of thieves, who have been stealing multiple cobbles from the race route, leaving wide gaps in the already treacherous surface.

Of course, cobble theft on the Paris-Roubaix route is nothing new. For years, mischievous individuals have sneaked into the Arenberg Trench to prise a pavé-shaped souvenir from the Hell of the North – and make it that bit more hellish in the process for its participants.

But this year, the cobble theft at Paris-Roubaix has become so severe that race director Thierry Gouvenou has publicly criticised the vandals, who he says have left the volunteers tasked with repairing the classic’s iconic sectors with a race against time before Sunday, while also putting the peloton in danger.

Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar, Arenberg, 2025 Paris-Roubaix
Mathieu van der Poel and Tadej Pogačar, Arenberg, 2025 Paris-Roubaix (Image Credit: Zac Williams/SWpix.com)

“This is something we’re seeing more often,” Gouvenou told Het Nieuwsblad. “What people are doing here can be dangerous.

“What those people are doing can be life-threatening. Imagine what happens if a rider hits one of those holes. They ride over these sectors at 50 kilometres an hour.”

As is always the case in the lead-up to Paris-Roubaix, local teams have been working to restore and patch up the race’s cobbled sectors on a daily basis, filling in any large gaps, to ensure they can be traversed safely by the riders.

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However, Gouvenou has warned that the volunteers are struggling to cope with the scale of the damage this year, with new gaps appearing every day.

Thieves aren’t the organisers’ only concerns on the Arenberg this week, with local wildlife also disturbing the Arenberg’s surface during the night this week.

“Those animals feel at home in the forest,” Gouvenou added. “They take leaves and branches onto the sectors.”

Paris Roubaix 2016 Arenberg - 2.jpg
Paris Roubaix 2016 Arenberg (Image Credit: Farrelly Atkinson)

Nevertheless, the race director is adamant that it’s humans – and their muddied hands – who pose the greatest danger to the riders when they tackle the Arenberg on Sunday.

“We want to see a great race,” he insisted. “But it has to be on a course that is intact. The race is already hard enough.”

Even by the misshapen standards of the Hell of the North, the legendary Arenberg’s 2.3km stretch of jagged, unruly cobbles forms one of the pivotal moments in the men’s Paris-Roubaix, coming with around 95km to go as the action starts to heat up (it’s yet to be featured in the women’s version, however).

Despite its distance to the finish, it is often marked both by the crash-filled chaos contained within the forest, and, historically, the fight for position that precedes it on the approach from Wallers, with the bunch barrelling towards its gloomy entrance at speeds of over 60kph.

Paris-Roubaix Arenberg Forest 'chicane'
Paris-Roubaix Arenberg Forest ‘chicane’ (Image Credit: Stefano Rizzato)

In a bid to make the run-in to the forest, and therefore the sector itself, safer, in 2024 organisers ASO decided to introduce a series of sharp bends just before the start of the Trouée d’Arenberg, forming a motor racing-style “chicane”.

That decision was made after the CPA pro riders’ union urged the organisers to introduce a method to slow down the riders, but divided opinion in the build-up to the race.

And while the F1-style chicane proved relatively uneventful in the end, it was replaced last year by a “small detour” around Arenberg’s mining site, which the men’s peloton will once again navigate this Sunday.