Former Soudal-QuickStep boss and cobbled Classics star director Patrick Lefevere has predicted that neither Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) nor defending champion Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Premier Tech) will be able to drop the other en route to Roubaix velodrome in the Hell of the North on Sunday.
With six Paris-Roubaix wins and six podiums in his director's palmares in the QuickStep squad between 2005 and 2019, not to mention overseeing multiple victories in the same race in the 1990s with predecessor GB-MG and its variants, as a manager, Lefevere had the biggest strike rate of victories in the toughest Classic of them all.
Writing his regular weekly column in Nieuwsblad, Lefevere said that he believed neither Pogačar nor Van der Poel would succeed in making it to Roubaix's Vélodrome André Pétrieux alone. Instead, he said, "They will take to the track together."
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"I’ll lean forward in my seat then, because I want to see that sprint. Two riders with no track experience against each other. The Vélodrome André Pétrieux isn't the Kuipke" - Ghent's notoriously technically challenging velodrome - "but there is still a bit of technique and, above all, a lot of tactics involved," he wrote.
In the same article for Nieuwsblad, Lefevere dived into his own memories of how riders can lose as well as win in Roubaix velodrome, pointing to the case of the late Franco Ballerini in 1993's edition of the Classic. As Lefevere put it, Barellerini "did everything wrong" against France's Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, who won by a scant eight millimetres over the Italian.
As Lefevere pointed out, Ballerini partly gifted Duclos-Lassalle the win when he had failed to check the wind direction, next launched his sprint too late and finally started to celebrate too early.
Ballerini went on to win Paris-Roubaix twice, in 1995 and in 1998, but in 1993, Lefevere reported, after such a narrow loss of the French Monument, the Italian was well-nigh inconsolable.
"That evening, I drove him and teammate Mario Cipollini to the airport, a ride I will never forget. Ballerini, crying in the back seat: 'I am a ciclista di merda.' [A shit cyclist] Cipollini, countering from the passenger seat: 'Nooo Franco, sei il più grande di tutti. You are the greatest of them all.' Drama and overacting as only Italians can deliver.
"I don't see where Van der Poel can drop Pogačar on Sunday. Or vice versa. On the cobblestones, Mathieu is in principle at an advantage as a heavier rider, but last year Pogačar only lost his wheel when he crashed. That was a problem of being too fast, not too slow."
Lefevere said he did not believe that equipment would make a difference, either, at least now, after the UCI banned Visma-Lease a Bike's Gravaa system. As he saw it, now "Everyone is competing on a level playing field."
Quite apart from equipment and lack of track knowledge, Lefevere added that he believed that when it came to Roubaix. "In every respect, they are evenly matched."
"Pogačar has one of the very strongest pure domestiques in Florian Vermeersch, but let's not forget that Silvan Dillier has also finished second in Roubaix. Van der Poel has a tactical option in [Jasper] Philipsen that Pogačar doesn't have, but at the same time, he is too much of a champion to play that game to the fullest."
Quite how Sunday will play out remains to be seen, but both riders have a huge amount at stake: Pogačar a victory in the only Monument he has never won, whilst Van der Poel will be pushing for a record-equalling fourth victory. As Lefevere sees it, the 2026 edition could all go down to the wire between the two leading favourites - and then anything could happen.
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