Cycling is becoming too fast: Winning time of 2019 Paris-Roubaix would be OTL in 2025
CyclingSaturday, 19 April 2025 at 19:05
Just like most of nowadays races, also Paris-Roubaix is becoming faster and faster thanks to many new innovations. This year's edition was in fact so fast that the winner from just six years ago wouldn't even make the time limit cut today.
This is once again evident from the findings of so-called cyclingspy on Instagram. The time limit for Paris-Roubaix is set at eight percent of the winning time. Mathieu van der Poel won this year after a race of 5:31:27, which brought the time limit to 5:57:58. On his road to victory in 2019, Philippe Gilbert took longer than that to reach the finish line. His winning time was 5:58:02. Outside the time limit.
Due to the many factors that determine the end time, it is difficult to compare the times with each other. Not only has the nutrition and equipment walked a long way since Gilbert's victory, the wind. and in general weather conditions, also play a huge part. However, it is a trend that it is going faster and faster in professional cycling. We also see this in the speed records that are being broken more and more often.
This year's Paris-Roubaix is not the fastest ever. Van der Poel reached the finish with an average speed of 46.921 kilometers per hour. Last year, the Dutchman, in the rainbow jersey, was even a bit faster. Then, he covered the distance in 5:25:58, which made his ride an extra kilometer per hour faster.
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- you’re everything wrong about our worldmij03-05-2025
- "Mathieu has also cleaned up everything on the road in the past two years" This year he was given a fight by Pogi in MSR and PR. and he was defeated in Flanders. In other races he is not even close to winning. There was no cleanup.abstractengineer03-05-2025
- Surely people had more fun watching you and your old "coworkers" saving energy for 4-5 hours and attacking the last 500 meters. Uff.. very funny. Typical resentful "old" cyclists against an incredibly talented (and disruptive) young man.
maria2024202403-05-2025 - What's more pressure than trying to beat MVDP in a one-day sprinter's classic? It's like trying to win a grand tour stage in a bunch sprint.. They both put each other in the pressure cooker, but JV needs to win, in my opinion, more than TP. Throw in Primoz and Remco in the climber's mix, and its going to be an exciting TDF.FredMan03-05-2025
- You're saying you'd rather believe LA than TP? Both great competitors but 2 different personalities altogether..FredMan03-05-2025
- Oh hey, thats a period and not a comma! You’re right. I did misread that. My apologies to the original post! Sorry ‘bout that, abstractengineer, thanks for pointing this out, mij.RidesHills03-05-2025
- Why would you expect cycling to be different than any other sport? World Tour riders pass tests in and out of competition, so the playing field is as level as can be found in any high level competition.
Barney02-05-2025 - I'd love to believe in TP but I can't help somethings in the bottles and it's not Ribens or Water... 🤔
leedorney02-05-2025 - Anna Kiesenhofer used the same method to prepare for the Tokyo Olympics, intervals while wearing her winter gear. Seemed to work really well for her!RidesHills02-05-2025
- He did not step down as owner, that was in 2010 but he obviously kept a financial interest. He stepped down as CEO but is still a board member.Mistermaumau02-05-2025
Simple solutions exist, no need to toy around with gearing or protection, just ban Tadej and Mathieu and everyone will go back to previous speeds ;-)
Its not the innovations. The top speed is decided by the top riders. MVDP, Pogi, Pedersen all started the hostilities on the Arenberg but it also ended there. In the past the Arenberg was just the start for the first selection and with attrition it kept reducing till the finale
Who even cares? It’s the goal of a bike race to ride as fast as possible? And that’s what we want to see?? This is maybe the dumbest article ever.
I would say that most people would rather see an exciting or strategic race than a boring one with record average speed. Proof of this is that people have rarely complained about a past race being slow but often that it was boring. Fast speeds are often the result of wind direction though it may be true that headwinds or tailwinds influence the way a race is run and on average one may result in more interesting outcomes than the other. Obviously a high speed can become a talking point but that’s about it. I doubt any spectator could tell the difference between riders averaging 43 or 45km/h as they go past so if it weren’t for the data being presented (often wrong anyway like the gaps between different riders) on screen, no-one would know or even try to guess.
everyone has their own preference, but what i don’t want to see is the women’s o loop 2025. a break away of nobodies and a peloton riding casual because no one wants to race. i want to see bare knuckled fights in which the riders go as deep as they can. on the best machines possible. which means races will get faster
women’s omloop. stupid spell check it was the worst race ever and slow AF
Well, you’re better iff these days than a small decade ago then, aren’t you?
For me yeah. I love these guys just doing stupid attacks and seeing if they stick. It’s like Mozart, or the Beatles, or whatever your preference is. When you’re watching a master at work you don’t ask them to dumb it down because it’s too good. You just appreciate it. These men today are masters at their craft and yes I love it
Amazing speeds compared to non cobble races, considering the huge extra power needed on the cobbles. I was watching a vid on how tires, pressure research and wheels have evolved for cobbles, it’s still horrible to ride but NO-ONE today will go back to trying to do this with past tech and standards, the difference is huge. Some are advocating riding cobbles with only 2 bar but pros will comprise at 3 to optimise the P-R cobbles/tarmac proportion. 5 bar is now considered optimal for tarmac alone on 28 tires. I still question that for normal bikes which aren’t very stiff, maybe lower pressure is more efficient for ultra rigid bikes only? But even then, I got to check out Cav’s TT bike at last year’s Tour and I could swear his tires were even wider than 32 and they felt like they had 10 bar in them???
so what does TOO FAST even mean? stupid non-article article…
Not too fast. An hour faster than 40 years ago with far better surfaces, equipment and nutrition plus it was dry and had the wind behind a lot of the time.
If you pick the right years
1948 43,5km/h
1964 45,1km/h
If you look at every year you see the progression used to be in steps and became more rare and gradual, there still seem to be steps sometimes but pretty small. The two biggest influences are 1. how the race evolves on the day and 2. wind direction. It seems high speed is now more consistent, probably because the way of racing has focused towards that, gone are the days of the leisurely 30km/h outing in preparation for a few hundred meters of sprinting towards the end.