The 2025 version of the boys’s Paris-Roubaix could have two new sectors of cobbles and a special speed-slowing method to the Forest of Arenberg, changing the chicane from final 12 months, that can preserve the race hellish however ought to make it safer. Mathieu van der Poel gained the 2024 Paris-Roubaix with a robust 60km solo assault. Lotte Kopecky gained the ladies’s race in a six-rider dash on the Roubaix Velodrome.
The 122nd version of Paris-Roubaix will probably be held on Sunday, April 13 over a distance of 259.2km.
The fifth version of Paris-Roubaix Femmes will probably be raced the day earlier than, on Saturday, April 12, on the identical 163km route from 2024, which incorporates 29.2 km of cobbles and the identical last 17 sectors of the boys’s race however not the Trouée d’Arenberg.
Race organisers ASO agreed with a request from the riders so as to add a chicane on the entrance of the Forest of Arenberg for the 2024 race. The last-minute change and a loop of a visitors island sparked large debate however labored, slowing the tempo of the peloton on the marginally descending straight highway to the Forest of Arenberg. Instead of hitting the cobbles at 60km/h, riders turned onto the sector a lot slower, leading to far fewer crashes.
For 2025, the speed-slowing methodology will head down a “small detour” as a substitute of the chicane, which incorporates 4 right-angle corners within the last kilometre earlier than the doorway to the cobbled miners’ monitor that cuts straight by way of the thick forest.
“This 12 months, we had been capable of finding another that permits the peloton to decelerate extra easily, a small detour that runs alongside the Arenberg mining web site. With this trick, there will probably be 4 right-angle turns within the kilometre earlier than the Trouée,” race director Thierry Gouvenou defined.
ASO does not give any particulars of the precise roads of the detour. They may embody a bit of highway by way of the homes of Arenberg however usually tend to enter the Arenberg mine, which is now a museum. The route would swing left off the primary highway after which take the rue de Croy highway by way of the world, earlier than a proper after which left flip that results in the beginning of the Forest of Arenberg.
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The 2025 males’s Paris-Roubaix will embody a complete of 30 cobbled sectors. The race will begin in Compiègne and finish within the iconic Roubaix velodrome.
The first sector comes after the village of Troisvilles after 95km of racing. The final is a symbolic sector close to the doorway to the velodrome. Gouvenou has added two new sectors, 30km earlier than the Forest of Arenberg that might shake up the ways and see assaults go even earlier.
The new sectors are in Artres, after 130.9km of racing, lasting 1300 metres, and in Famars quickly after, lasting 1200m.
“These aren’t significantly tough passages however by introducing them it permits us to have a sequence of 5 sectors virtually with out driving on asphalt,” Gouvenou defined.
The map of the 2025 Paris-Roubaix route (Image credit score: ASO)