“I was never in the game” - Christophe Laporte struggles after early puncture in another torrid race for Visma | Lease a Bike at Paris-Roubaix

It has been a difficult couple of weeks for Team Visma | Lease a Bike, as both Wout van Aert and Jonas Vingegaard sustained serious injuries in crashes at Dwars door Vlaanderen and Itzulia Basque Country. Dylan van Baarle was also unable to start Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, as the former winner of the Hell of the North fell ill on the day of the race.

Matteo Jorgenson and Jan Tratnik also missed the race, which left the Dutch team with a depleted squad at the start. Their leader Christophe Laporte also punctured on the first cobbled sector of the, which left him in a difficult position for the remainder of the race. Per Strand Hagenes had been able to make the early breakaway, but that was caught with around 140km by the peloton led by Alpecin-Deceuninck.

The only shining light for the team was the performances of the Van Dijke brothers, who were the team’s best finishers on the day, with Tim van Dijke finishing in eighth place before being subsequently relegated to 16th place for irregular sprinting in the Roubaix Velodrome.

Speaking to France TV after the race, Laporte explained what went wrong for him, as he said “it was complicated, I didn’t see anything of the race. I had a puncture on the first cobbled sector and it went very quickly. I was never in the game, I had difficulty getting back into action. But as I said, it was already a bit unexpected that I was there, so I raced until the end. Of course it’s disappointing, more bad luck, but that’s how it is. We haven’t had too much success in recent years in this race, but let’s hope that one day things will improve”.