This week - as always when I'm in France - I leafed through L'Équipe, the daily sports newspaper.

Why don't we have something like that in Germany?

It doesn't matter.

The first 21 pages were dedicated to Bernard Tapie, the football official, cycling financier, politician, singer, trader and criminal, who had been shining for decades and died at the age of 78.

21 pages for him, followed by 14 pages of football, then ten pages for the 118th edition of the Paris – Roubaix cycle race, a rain, mud and dirt race over 260 kilometers through ankle-deep puddles and flooded cobblestones - a race furrowed by falls and drama , an inferno of Dante proportions.

On the ten pages that L'Équipe dedicated to this race, there were 25 lines about a driver named Tom Paquot.

25 lines only, but I think the essence of this race was poured into it, possibly more than this: the essence of the sport.

Paquot, 22 years old, neoprofi with the Belgian second division team Bingoal, was the last to cross the finish line in Roubaix.

On paper he didn't even finish, because in the final ranking his name was "OTL", Outside Time Limit.

With 40:17 minutes behind the winner, he had fallen out of time.

He had missed almost a quarter of an hour to take the last, 97th place in the official ranking.

He cried without a break

Only 96 drivers came into the classification, 68 had given up, ten had failed at the time limit. Paquot had lost touch early on. He drove 150 kilometers alone through the "Hell of the North", as the French call the race, the last 50 kilometers he drove without food, there was no more, there was only the will to get through and the spectators who applauded him.

Paquot should have got into the broom wagon, but he asked the helpers to leave him behind, he would, he told them, whatever happened, reach the Roubaix Velodrome, they didn't have to worry. For the last five kilometers, Paquot cried non-stop, and when he pulled into the velodrome, a mummy made of dried mud, fans celebrated him as one of the heroes of the day. Paquot did a lap of honor, and yes, sometimes it's worth looking at the last one. Sometimes his performance also shows the power of sport, its magic and elemental force, which arises from the synthesis of athlete and fan, emotion and tradition, courage and despair.

“This race was hell,” said Clément Davy, who finished 35th, “but I found in him the reason why I get up every day and get on the bike.

It was terrific. ”That was it.

Tapie would have loved it.