Cycling · international
Van der Poel's Roubaix treble follows Ferrand-Prévot's breakthrough
A weekend of solo winners ended with Mathieu van der Poel's third consecutive men's Paris-Roubaix, one day after Pauline Ferrand-Prévot became the women's race's first French champion.
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Two solo wins in the velodrome
Mathieu van der Poel completed a Paris-Roubaix hat-trick on 13 April, winning the men's race in 5:31:27. Slovenia's Tadej Pogačar finished 1:18 behind on his debut, and Denmark's Mads Pedersen won the sprint for third at 2:11. The Dutch rider joined Octave Lapize and Francesco Moser as the only men to win three consecutive editions, turning an already successful defence into a rare place in the race's history.
His victory followed Pauline Ferrand-Prévot's breakthrough in Paris-Roubaix Femmes on 12 April. The Visma-Lease a Bike rider became the first French woman to win the event, finishing 58 seconds ahead of Italy's Letizia Borghesi. Lorena Wiebes took third at 1:01. Across the weekend, both winning moves left the eventual champions alone on the approach to the Vélodrome André-Pétrieux.
The men's duel turns on a corner
The men's route covered 259.2 kilometres and 30 cobbled sectors. Van der Poel's acceleration after the Arenberg sequence helped create a five-man front group with Pogačar, Pedersen, Jasper Philipsen and Stefan Bissegger. Punctures disrupted Pedersen and Bissegger, while pressure at Mons-en-Pévèle eventually left the two leading rivals together.
Pogačar crashed after misjudging a right-hand turn on the Pont-Thibault to Ennevelin sector inside the last 40 kilometres. Van der Poel escaped the incident and continued alone. A later bike change cost Pogačar further time; a puncture for the leader at Carrefour de l'Arbre did not erase the advantage. Pedersen recovered from his own interruption and beat Wout van Aert and Florian Vermeersch in the velodrome sprint for the remaining podium place.
Ferrand-Prévot changes the plan
The women's fifth edition featured 148.5 kilometres, 17 cobbled sectors and 135 starters. Ferrand-Prévot's move began with about 25 kilometres remaining. She caught Emma Norsgaard and then left her behind on the Camphin-en-Pévèle cobbles, converting a gap into a solo ride rather than waiting for a reduced-group sprint.
The result depended on an earlier recovery as well as the decisive attack. Ferrand-Prévot and teammate Linda Riedmann were caught in a crash before she returned to the leading group. Marianne Vos had followed Lotte Kopecky's acceleration, maintaining Visma's presence at the front. In the team's report, Ferrand-Prévot explained that the original plan favoured Vos because she had not felt well in the preceding days. Her successful attack gave the team another route to victory.
Different careers, the same demands
Ferrand-Prévot had returned to road racing in 2025 after winning the mountain-bike Olympic title in Paris. Winning Roubaix on her first appearance demonstrated how quickly she could transfer that competitive strength to the road's most distinctive cobbled challenge. Borghesi's second place and Wiebes's sprint for third completed a podium shaped by the solo attack's survival.
Van der Poel's post-race account stressed the suffering and uncertainty of the final kilometres. He credited Pogačar's debut and acknowledged that the crash had changed their duel. The men's and women's outcomes both illustrated the combination of sustained power, positioning and recovery from disruption that Roubaix demands, while producing one established champion's historic treble and one returning road rider's first victory in the race.
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