Roglic, victim of the escabechina led by Pogacar in the pavés

• Direct This is how we live it

Crossing the pavé sections is like crossing the jungle, an area full of invisible dangers.

The edges of the cobblestones are challenging, they dig into the soul.

There he fights to survive, to get out unharmed.

And when it comes to survival, few know more than

and

, the main beneficiaries of the hellish cobblestone day.

The Australian won the stage and

managed to keep the lead against Powless and Boasson Hagen.

Pogacar showed overwhelming authority over his most direct rivals and only lowered his splendid performance in the last 10 kilometers.

The Slovenian flew in a diabolical terrain, with 11 paved sectors,

, interspersed in the last 78 kilometers of the stage.

Four of those sections were included in Paris-Roubaix, five were unprecedented and two had not been tackled since 1983.

A stage full of incidents, which started with a breakaway made up of

(Intermarché),

,

(EF Education),

(TotalEnergies),

(Israel) and

(B&B Hotels-KTM) .

The first crashes were suffered by

and

on the first approach to the rocks, with Pogacar, very attentive and pushing hard to neutralize the breakaways.

Relieved without the dreaded rain, the dust appeared, concentrating into an uncomfortable blinding cloud.

The Australian

(fourth last year) was the first of the victims.

He suffered a breakdown in the third stage and in a flash he gave up more than a minute with the group of the best, led by

and Pogacar.

In the fourth

was left off the hook and

suffered a breakdown,

gave him the bike in a chaotic change with three more Jumbo riders trying to help the leader.

Enric Mas

and

were also cut from a platoon with less than 50 units.

Van Aert, with no chance of victory, waited for Vingegaard.

Then came the fall of Roglic and a subsequent ordeal as he lacked the energy to connect with the rest of the favorites.

Escabechina suffered by the Jumbo Visma in the equator of the sectors of the pavés.

At 25 kilometers from the finish line, the Dane lost 50 seconds with Pogacar;

the Roglic, 1.40.

Extreme suffering on a crushing surface for the back, arms and head.

The rattling pierces the brain and everything gets complicated if you also accumulate physical and mechanical misfortunes, as happened to Roglic.

Pogacar makes the difficult easy.

There are no impossible challenges.

On a day that was complicated, given that on the eve of leaving Copenhagen, he lost

to covid, who was the great specialist of the UAE in this field.

But on the cobblestones he carried himself with exquisite authority.

He always at the head of the main group.

With 16 kilometers to go, he abandoned his teammates and was left alone with

(Trek), winner of the Milan-San Remo.

When it seemed that he was going to finish the job he slowed down and from behind, with a splendid Van Aert, the distances were shortened.

The breakaways continued to grow and arrived at the finish line with an advantage of 54 seconds with Pogacar and 10 seconds more with Vingegaard's group.

Roglic, two minutes later.

Enric Mas saved a very complicated.

He was always protected by

the Spaniard with the most appearances at Paris-Roubaix: 17 editions.

Before the start, he already explained to the Balearic Islands that irregular stone sections have to be braked and change direction in a different way, more firmly, but gently.

How could it be otherwise, the pavés reduced the options of some favorites, as happened in 2010, when

crashed

and Armstrong lost 11 minutes due to a breakdown.

In 2014, Lars Boom won, and Contador lost nearly three minutes to a great display from

.

In 2018,

Froome

fell

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