"Bittersweet" was the word Luke Rowe used to encapsulate the contrasting emotions of his fourth Paris-Roubaix. The Team Sky rider was beset by bad luck and saw his own chances go out of the window, but his selfless dedication helped teammate and close friend Ian Stannard reach the podium.
"I left it all out there," said Rowe, who emptied the tank after hitting the deck when Gianni Moscon crashed on sector 11. Sky had numbers at that stage, and Rowe was looking good to repeat – or better – his eighth-place finish of last year. On the arduous chase back to the front of the race, however, the Welshman decided to commit everything he had left to the cause of his teammate.
"I had to chase to get back and I knew then that the one big effort of the day was done. So as soon as I came back I said to Yogi [Stannard - ed.], ‘I'm all yours man, just tell me what to do and I'll do it," Rowe told Cyclingnews and a couple of other journalists outside the Team Sky bus.
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"You know how everyone gives something to someone…the whole team was incredible and gave so much to us, and the way it turned out I gave everything I had to Yogi and he's finished on the podium in what I consider to be the biggest Monument in the world. I'm super happy for him."
Rowe came into the race on the back of his strongest Classics campaign to date, with impressive performances at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the Tour of Flanders, where he achieved his best ever Monument finish with fifth. With four men at the head of a fractured and aggressive race, and favourites well behind, the 26-year-old was probably starting to get excited about his prospects. Paris-Roubaix, however, can be a cruel race.
"For me it's kind of bittersweet. The crash, then I punctured on Carrefour [de l'Arbre], then before the velodrome my rear mech stopped working," he explained, before saying stoically: "That's Paris-Roubaix. If you speak to every team, everyone has their story about today, and their opinion about how the race could have gone better. No one has a clean run.
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