Zdenek Stybar held his head in his hands as he sat in the centre of the Roubaix velodrome, knowing he had missed a great chance to win Paris-Roubaix – and it was not just his own second-place finish that stung.
The hopes and dreams of Stybar's Quick-Step teammate Tom Boonen retiring with a final and fifth victory ended Sunday when a series of attacks put Stybar, Greg Van Avermaet, Sebastian Langeveld up the road and left Boonen stuck behind.
Boonen eventually finished 13th in the chase group at 12 seconds, dissatisfied with the result but happy to let the curtain come down on his long, successful career.
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Stybar led out the sprint on the final banking of the velodrome but Van Avermaet powered past him to hit the line first and win. Second place meant little to Stybar; he wanted to see Boonen on the podium and possibly on the top step.
"In normal circumstances I would have been happy but today I'm disappointed. My biggest dream was to ride here with Tom into the velodrome together and it didn't happen," Stybar said in the post-race press conference after climbing on the second step of the podium and watching winner Van Avermaet lift the winner's cobblestone trophy.
"Tom is a very special person, a very kind person and very friendly. If you can, you just do everything for him. We didn't feel like we had to, we wanted to; we wanted to give 100 per cent for him because he deserved it. All the team was supporting him and we all wished in our hearts that Tom could win. We did everything possible to make it happen. I actually thought that he might still be able to come back but when they said it was 40 seconds and even more, then we knew that it would be really difficult."
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