After two and a half years, this Sunday will finally once again be the stage for the (in my humble opinion) best single day of cycling there is on the calendar. "The Hell in the North", Paris-Roubaix, will be raced again after being canceled once and postponed another time due to COVID lockdowns.
The race is infamous for its grueling pavées, sections of cobbles of dubious quality. This year's race will have a total of no less than 30 cobbled sections, meaning that 55 of the races 257 km will be ridden on cobblestones.
The weather is always a key factor in Paris-Roubaix, and based on the forecasts it seems we may get a wet one this year, which makes the race all the more dramatic and chaotic - and interesting. The race is notoriously unpredictable due to the difficult course and countless punctures and many crashes. The pavées are very narrow, and it is very easy to be caught behind others if you're not up front, which adds to the stress. You can lose this race in a hundred ways, and many of them are not in your own hands.
The favorites:
These days it is a rare thing for Wout van Aert to participate in a cycling race and not be considered among the favorites, and Sunday will be no different.
After a disappointing World Championship on home turf, he has a chance for redemption on the French cobbles.
He was also among the favorites the last time the race was raced in 2019, but a couple of punctures ruined his chances.
You can't say WvA without also saying MvdP. Mathieu van der Poel has recently come back from a nasty injury in the Olympics mountain bike competition where he crashed. His form was therefore questionable going into the World Championship Road Race, and while he wasn't at his peak, he finished 8th overall and first in the group with Wout van Aert, so he is clearly not completely out of it.
Another rider who had a poor World Championship was Mads Pedersen. The former World Champion crashed twice and abandoned the race. He has never finished top 50 in Roubaix in 4 tries, but he is seemingly in OK form and absent crashes or punctures he could be a contender (I hope).
"The Wolfpack" aka Quickstep are, as always in classics, a many-headed juggernaut. Realistically at least 5 different Quickstep riders might win this race, and their strength in numbers have time and time again proven to be difficult to deal with in these races. If I was a betting man, which I am, I'd back QSTP to win, but as always Paris-Roubaix is very unpredictable.
Therefore the final favorite is
literally anyone. In this race, anything can happen. Perhaps most best demonstrated in the 2016 edition, where the race was won by Australian Mathew Hayman, undoubtedly a rider of quality in the cobbled classics, but nevertheless a rider without a long list of wins. The win was made all the more impressive by the fact that he beat Tom Boonen, one of the best cobblestone classics riders of all time, and 4 time winner of Paris-Roubaix (tied for most with Roger de Vlaeminck) in a sprint.
This was only Hayman's third ever professional win - in fact his only ever win on the World Tour. I haven't bothered to check, but I dare say you won't be able to find (m)any other riders in recent history, who have only ever won a single World Tour race and it happened to be a monument (thank you Bettiol for winning that Giro stage earlier this year), certainly not over a 19 year career. It speaks to the unpredictability of the race.
To warmup and get in the mood, I recommend the documentary "En Forårsdag i Helvede" (lit. "A Spring Day in Hell), by Danish journalist, cycling enthusiast and commentator, poet, filmmaker etc. Jørgen Leth. The documentary follows the 1976 race from preparations to finish, with legends such as Eddy Merckx, Roger de Vlaeminck, Freddy Martens and Francesco Moser being in the center of the race.
https://youtu.be/KkQub5pPZFQ here's a link to the original with English subtitles, here is an English narrated version
https://youtu.be/zxBTVU9JDrA. I can't recommend it enough, even to outsiders of cycling I think it gives a great insight into what makes cycling races great, both as a sports competition but also as a cultural event that captivates an entire region once a year.