Blood, sweat, tears and cobblestones

April 12, 2016 2:48 AM

Last Sunday was the day of Paris-Roubaix, one of the most important races of the year in cycling. Today, the team of surprise winner and ultimate underdog Mathew Hayman posted the latest episode in their ongoing series Orica Greenedge backstage pass. Enjoy!

bonus: excellent documentary about the Paris-Roubaix race in 1976: A Sunday in Hell.

posted by Kosmob0t (14 comments total)

Tremendous video. Thanks for posting.
posted by Tullius at 3:36 AM on April 12, 2016

Sunday in Hell is such a good film! Jorgen Leth used almost every cameraman in Denmark to make it. Competitive cycling is such an opaque sport, but the film does such a good job of poetically explaining what's going on and why it's dramatic. I'll look forward to the chance to check out the other links.
posted by Cassettevetes at 3:38 AM on April 12, 2016

This win! Hayman's face of disbelief when he'd won was..well..wonderful. Several of the post race interviews with him show him on the verge of tears, which shows how much this race means to him.

On a larger point, Orica Greenedge (and Fordy in particular) do such a good job with Backstage Pass. Not only from a marketing point of view, though the music and humour do a job of selling the team. From the last year, I particularly liked this unusually musicless scene showing the carnage that is arriving at the scene of a crash as a mechanic, and a few days of milking a terrible joke at the start of the Vuelta last year.

So good.
posted by sarcas at 4:27 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

This year's race was great! Was rooting for Boonen to get the record, but Hayman earned every bit of that win, and was super gracious in victory:

"I would have liked to have seen him win and get the record, to be honest. I respect him, and he’s the king of Roubaix"
posted by strange chain at 4:35 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

Watched it live on Sporza and it was one of the best races I ever saw. You could hear the Belgians in the background going nuts when they thought Boonen's last attack was going to stick. The last 20km were like five punch drunk boxers all struggling to land the killer blow.

Steephill have collected the various highlights in one place. This amazing video of the last 3k
shows the winner standing in complete disbelief in the infield, til a cameraman tells him he's won, and he just says "oh fuck".

It's inspired me to do the sportive next year - in common with the Tour of Flanders and other races, amateurs are allowed tackle the course the day before the pro race.
posted by kersplunk at 5:09 AM on April 12, 2016 [3 favorites]

That was a crazy, crazy race (all those attacks at the end! Hayman hanging on for dear life only to pull out the win!) and the Tour of Flanders the previous week was also super exciting.

I continue to marvel at what a huge effect Tony Martin can have on these races... his big pull to bring Boonen up had a domino effect that basically wrecked any chance Sagan and Cancellara had. Not sure if he'll ever win in the Classics season but it would be neat.
posted by selfnoise at 6:13 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

Such an amazing race and the celebration in the team car gave me chills. Also, Cosmo Catalano has a fantastic "How the Race Was Won" if anyone is interested in the nuts and bolts of how the 2016 Roubaix unfolded.
posted by photoslob at 6:26 AM on April 12, 2016

A tremendous race. The finish was thrilling, and maybe only topped by Sagan's bunnyhop over the fallen Cancellara. Mad skilz, yo.
posted by Capt. Renault at 6:26 AM on April 12, 2016

The always fantastic cycling podcast has their Paris-Roubaix episode up.
posted by cmfletcher at 7:22 AM on April 12, 2016

I put the start of the race on at breakfast, thinking I would watch the break form and then come back for the last 100km, and then I sat in front of it for pretty much the whole six hours. Great race right down to the final km. It's in the videos above but worth another shot of Sagan's amazing bunny hop, which comes after this superb crash avoidance in the last few metres of Milan-San Remo.
posted by penguinliz at 7:31 AM on April 12, 2016 [1 favorite]

P-R is one of the great one day sporting events, no doubt, and this year's edition really delivered. In a field that held Cancellara ,Sagan, and Boonen, Haymen's win was all the more improbable, but his never -give -up ethos paid off in storybook fashion.
His look of disbelief immediately after the race is a moment that will live in the history of great P-R moments.
posted by OHenryPacey at 7:53 AM on April 12, 2016

Sagan was the Junior World Mountain Bike champion before he switched to road racing. He's probably got the best bike handling skills of anyone in the pro peloton. I remember one stage of the TdF last year where he did some pretty mad descending.
posted by daveje at 8:13 AM on April 12, 2016

I knew it was going to be Hayman when I saw him get above Boonen and Vanmarcke on the track*, but up until then it could have been any of them. One of the most exciting Paris-Roubaix finishes I've ever seen. In fact, the whole race was pretty intense- not just Cancellara's crash, but seeing Sky put five men at the front of the bunch, only to have four taken out by road conditions within 10 minutes of each other. They should probably review their tactics for the 1-day classics.


*Paris-Roubaix is one of the few road races that finishes with a lap in a velodrome. Given the right circumstances, it can make for an exiting finish, such as when Duclos-Lassalle and Ballerini sprinted to the line on suspension forks in 1993.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:44 AM on April 12, 2016

Matt Hayman was a year or two behind me in high school. He was getting pretty seriously into racing then. I'm immensely pleased to see this victory.
posted by the duck by the oboe at 5:16 PM on April 12, 2016 [2 favorites]