Mathieu van der Poel debuts the unreleased Canyon Endurace at E3 – What does this mean for the Paris-Roubaix arms race?

Recently we brought you the news that Alpecin-Premier Tech were racing aboard a new, unreleased, and far more racy Canyon Endurace. Until now though, their talismanic leader, Mathieu van der Poel, hasn’t had the chance to ride it in a race situation, but he has been spotted aboard it for today’s E3 Saxo Classic.

Given the proximity to both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, it seems extremely likely that the flying Dutchman is using E3 as a race-test of his cobbles setup ahead of Holy Week.

The new Endurace – if it is indeed going to replace the existing model rather than sit alongside it – is clearly much more race-oriented and aerodynamic.

Van der Poel has won Roubaix in the last three consecutive years aboard his usual Aeroad, but in 2025 he was run very close by Tadej Pogačar until the Slovenian crashed out on a corner in the closing stages of the race. Pogačar, as we have reported on recently, looks to be totally changing up his cobble setup for a second charge at the Hell of the North, opting for his aero Y1Rs, as confirmed by his mechanic, with the widest possible tyres crammed into the frame and fork.

The new Endurace will have been in development for some time, and so isn’t a direct response to a change in Pogačar’s setup, but it certainly opens the door to a Roubaix arms race, and may herald a return to the Roubaix-specific bikes of old if he can hold off for a fourth consecutive victory.

A Roubaix arms race, or just a new bike?

In days gone by it was not uncommon to see Roubaix raced by many riders aboard cyclocross bikes. Mat Hayman’s famous victory aboard a standard Scott Foil aero bike ushered in a new era of aero bikes taking on the cobbles, a trend that has somewhat gone unchecked ever since, as the course is almost entirely pan-flat.

In recent years with tyre dynamics becoming the new frontier of performance, pro teams have looked to cram ever larger tyres into their frames, with 35mm being the general ceiling on many aero bikes, especially when running Shimano groupsets, as the front derailleur tends to be the width-limiting factor before the chainstays.

The problem now is that wider tyres are less aerodynamic, despite offering rolling resistance, comfort, and control advantages over the savage cobble sections. As such, the modern aero bikes are optimised around 28c or 30c tyres, which is what the pros use for 99% of racing scenarios.

The new Endurace looks to my eyes, and to yours too I suspect, like an Aeroad but with bigger tyre clearances, and a bike that to some degree will have been tailor made for the cobbled races of the Spring Classics. Van der Poel still seems to insist on using 44cm handlebars, despite the new Endurace seemingly coming with a new, narrower aero cockpit.

Whether we see this kick start a new era of Roubaix-specific bikes I think depends mostly on if he wins or not. If he does then it wouldn’t be a great surprise to see Colnago rushing to develop a similarly cobble-happy aero machine, but if Pogačar wins then the impetus to do so may be greatly reduced.

What I think will be the most interesting bike at Roubaix, however, will be whatever is underneath the Visma-Lease A Bike riders.

Visma, gravel bikes, and the rogue third option

Gravel bikes at Roubaix aren’t a new phenomenon, and they draw heavily on the tropes of the ‘cross bikes of old with bigger tyres and slightly more languid geometry. Israel-Premier Tech used the Factor Ostro Gravel in 2024, though were hamstrung by the Shimano derailleur issue making it more of a headline-grabber than an actual performance gain.

In recent years we’ve seen the men’s Visma squad do recon aboard the aero S5, before opting for the more endurance-oriented Celvélo soloist for race day, at odds with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s S5 setup to take the win in the women’s race.

Since the dust has settled on last year's race, Cervélo released a new Aspero gravel bike with a whopping 37-watt saving over the old version thanks to an aero-first design, and a relatively conservative 45mm tyre capacity given the trend towards tyres measured in inches rather than millimetres.

It’s not a huge leap to suggest that the new Aspero, dressed up with deep wheels and wide tyres, could open up a second front in the equipment war. It certainly looks more aero than the Soloist, and the aeroification of every bike genre from road, through all-road to gravel bikes means that slowly more and more teams should have the option of a much more adept Roubaix bike in coming years without brands having to invest in something implicitly or explicitly ‘Roubaix specific’.