1 podium in 25 years - The French struggle at Paris-Roubaix

Sebastien Turgot finished second to Tom Boonen in the 2012 Paris-Roubaix. Since then, no Frenchman has managed to finish on the podium. To find the last victory, we have to go back much further, to 1997, when Frédéric Guesdon won ahead of Belgians Jo Planckaert and Johan Musseew.

Thus, the Frenchmen have had one podium and no victories in the 'Hell of the North' in the last 25 years. Le Parisien journalist Christophe Bérard is clear about the reason for the drought: "Lack of interest in the cobblestones".

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It's as simple as that. And we can understand that, for example, a country like Spain has historically had this lack of interest in the cobbles because of their remoteness, because of the remoteness of the races where they are key.

But in France it is shocking. The lack of success in the only monument held on French soil is shocking. It is shocking that they have not maintained the tradition of the eighties with Bernard Hinault, Yvon Bertin or Marc Madiot, among others, or of the nineties with Jean-Claude Colotti, Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle or the aforementioned last winner Guesdon.

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But that's the way it is. The drought is not as long as in the Tour de France or Roland Garros, but more worrying in the sense that there are no great French riders who adapt to a race that is theirs but that clearly seems to belong more to the Belgians or the Dutch than to the French themselves.

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