Because the Wout group was not that far behind…if they made Colbrelli do all the work, they would have been caught. Especially for Vermeersch, his best option for a result was to ride.
9/10 times I’ll take MVP over Colbrelli in a small group sprint….but at the end of a race as hard as today was, it is a crapshoot. Too many variables….
I’ll agree to disagree. If I’m Vermeersch, I stop pulling through. Neither MDVP nor Colbrelli, especially Colbrelli, are going to ease up and let the WVA group - they were like 40 - 50 seconds back, if not more - catch back on.
I thought Vermeersch did a pretty good job of not taking very many pulls for at least the last 10k. He also had an opportunity to pin Colbrelli down low behind MVP with half a lap to go on the track which he didn’t (couldn’t . . .) take advantage of. That might have won him the race.
I think you can make a case for Vermeersch to stop working If MVP keeps working….but if they both had sat up and let Colbrelli do all the work, it would have been over. 50” can disappear pretty quickly on the cobbles in the right circumstances….it can also be an eternity. 
There are very few riders who I would want to lose a race by crashing or having a mechanical, but one of the few (maybe the only one?) had both a mechanical and a crash that cost him a likely victory. Thank the cycling gods
Absolutely fantastic edition of Roubaix today, no complaints about the winner, he rode an impeccable race and was absolutely a deserving winner
Biggest surprise for me was the lack of impact from Quickstep - just shocking to me that they weren’t able to parlay their numbers into a stronger results
Haaa…
So was Boonen when Mat Hayman won - but in a day like today all bets are off really. Especially if you’ve had to work hard for positioning into every secteur vs spending most of the day taking even pulls.
Epic race! Congratulations to Colbrelli but damn I didn’t want it to be him out of those three. I absolutely know it’s ridiculous, but I hate watching riders win after not doing their share.
Colbrelli was fantastic and put the Watts in all the right places to cover moves and there’s no hiding at PR, but he was riding glass pedals when it came to contributing to the chase lol.
(All only my opinion of course)
He played the game right and let MVP do the heavy lifting, but I totally agree, from the arm chair it always seems like a nobler win when there’s equal work being done throughout the race.
I applaud Colbrelli for saving his watts for when they counted. He’s like the only bike racer with a brain lately.
One thing I’ve noticed with both MVDP and WVA is that they will often drive the pace of whatever group they are in. They get impatient when others pull and will quickly get back on the front. MVDP was doing this even when Colbrelli was pulling today.
He has to be applauded, and he was rewarded for his efforts with a victory. I still hate to see it.
MVdP and Wout have a similar issue to that of Sagan and Cancellara, and others of the past where every rider has eyes on them. At least MVdP does drive the pace (sometimes) and keeps himself in the race. Wout (and MVdP when they’re together) get sucked into letting someone ride up the road if they wait for the “clever” riders to commit to help.
I don’t understand why either of them frequently use the ‘ride them off my wheel’ technique. Granted it often works for them. Kudos to MVDP for doing that in the Arenburg Forest sector. He created the separation that dropped WVA but he also gave the others on his wheel a free ride.
I think he’d be better off attacking hard, creating a separation, and then letting the others waste their energy bridging (if they can).
The ‘ride them off my wheel thing’ is too cyclocross like.
I get it. But his problem is he attacks, then because they’ve been saving energy they can bridge. That’s racing, it’ll never change. If MVdP was in better form I think he’d have been able to gap the other three, but he didn’t look to have the legs of pre Olympics.
Wout is a surprise after being in such dominant form at Tour of Britain and almost the whole year including TT World’s. His form (or motivation?) Seems to have deserted him?
No, Wout got caught behind a rider who went down in Arenberg. Wout caught back on. The decisive move came 20+KM later.
Like with Sagan, other riders won’t work with them bc they know that if they do they will lose the sprint. So MvdP and WVA have to do the lions share bc the other riders won’t work equally with them. If they play games, they definitely lose. This is what happened to WVA in the Olympic road race (he has to pull everyone).
It’s not that they’re not tactically smart. It’s that given they are marked men, this has to be their tactic. They are pretty successful even so
I enjoyed the race! But I did NOT enjoy watching all the crashing. It will be OK with me if there is never another wet rainy Roubaix! I don’t dislike any pro cyclist enough to wish them serious injury. Even somebody who can be as odious as Moscon.
iI don’t think anyone here was wishing an injury (serious OR minor) on Moscon.
An actually epic race!
MvdP looked exhausted, I think he sidn’t have the fitness to do that and still pulled for 40k and got 3rd. The way he looked after the finish, it was harder on him than his crazy Amstel Gold race.
WA got caught out of position and then tried to “play it smart” by riding with the group, but that didn’t come off. He seemed to have good legs before that, so maybe he should have done the MvdP thing and try to get off the front. Its hard for both of them, nobody rides with them and they are marked whatever they do.
From the women’s race on Saturday, it was clear that it was a race for lone riders - the groups were just too dangerous on the cobbles, and on Sunday it too was a “everyman for himself” type of race.
With regards to Sagan and being a marked man I thought exactly the same in regards to WVA. He’s going to have to change his game quite a bit next season. Makes for frustrating racing sometimes, because riders think, well I can’t work with WVA to pull X rider back because he’ll do me in the sprint, but if I don’t work we won’t get to sprint anyway.
I think there’s also something else to think about, as we watch the race unfold, we tend to say or think "why doesn’t X attack now, why are they letting X do all the work. Simple fact is, more often than not they just don’t have the legs!
