Every rider, from the top of the classification to the bottom, has a story to tell at Paris-Roubaix, and it was no different for Fred Wright (Bahrain Victorious), who sprinted home 4:35 behind winner Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck) to secure a career-best ninth-place finish.
The Briton beat the likes of Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck), Filippo Ganna (Ineos Grenadiers) and Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) to secure the top-10 spot, had a few tales to tell after crossing the line, including his own Arenberg nightmare.
"I avoided the big crashes early on. The first sector was pretty hectic, but I managed to survive OK. I just kept believing," Wright recalled, before pivoting to his story of mechanical woe suffered in the famous forest.
"My bike went into crash mode on Arenberg, which is probably the worst thing that could happen," he added, which is to say that his Shimano Di2 electronic gearing basically mistook the harsh cobbles for a crash, locking him in gear.
"I positioned myself well after missing the split on the sector before, and then I was in my biggest gear just churning away getting passed by everyone. I thought, 'maybe my race is over'."
He'd mount a comeback, though, with his persistence and belief still intact, a helping hand from the headwind, and a new bike under him.
"Thanks to the headwind in that sector – I wanted to anticipate, but in the end, it helped me come back a bit more into the race. I changed bikes, and then it was just about keeping believing."
He made his way into of the myriad chase groups minutes behind the battle for victory, even going on the offensive on his own at one point.
The point came in between the final two toughest cobbled sectors of the race, Camphin-en-Pévèle and Carrefour de l'Arbre, where Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) mounted her race-winning attack on Saturday in Paris-Roubaix Femmes.
"There was one point towards the end, coming to Carrefour de l'Arbre, I was looking around and thinking 'I need to go here because I'm feeling better than this group'," Wright said.
"And I attacked my group in the same place that Pauline attacked yesterday, so that worked out."
After racing across the final trio of one- and two-star sectors, one task remained for Wright to complete in the finishing sprint on the Vélodrome André-Pétrieux. That task, to make the top 10, was made somewhat easier by a bizarre incident in Roubaix, which saw two of his rivals take a wrong turn before entering the velodrome.
"The two guys on the front, two idiots, they didn't realise you had to turn right into the velodrome, and they just went off left and that was them out of the picture," he said. "There were five of us, and I was like 'oh, all right, nice. That's a bit easier to get a top 10'.
"Then the Intermarché-Wanty guy had a gap, Jasper Philipsen started closing, and then I hit them with a lap to go. I kind of thought maybe they'd come around, but I managed to hold on for ninth."
His top-10 result is another solid entry on his palmarès, adding to similar achievements at Milan-San Remo (earlier this spring) and the Tour of Flanders (in 2022 and 2023). The challenge now, he said, is to improve and get into the fight for the very top placings at these Monuments.
"I've got to start doing a bit better," he concluded. "It's working out how to not be the best of the rest. But yes, I'm happy with that."
Subscribe to Cyclingnews for unlimited access to our 2025 Spring Classics coverage. Don't miss any of the breaking news, reports, and analysis from all the Cobbled Classics from Opening Weekend to Paris-Roubaix. Find out more.
