Our youth team is ready for the cobbles of the \u201cHell of the North\u201d.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest days of the year for cycling fans from all over the world will be April 12, which schedules four versions of Paris-Roubaix: Men\u2019s, Women\u2019s, U23 and Junior.<\/p>\n
Our feeder squad, who has enjoyed an impressive first couple of months this year, lines up at the start of this 56th edition with seven riders: first-year U23 Luc Royer, Federico Savino, Boucle de l\u2019Artois podium finisher Joeri Schaper, Jasper Schoofs, Erazem Valjavec \u2013 who came close to winning this race as a junior \u2013 Matijs Van Strijthem, and Marc Zafra.<\/p>\n
The course, which starts from Le Cateau-Cambr\u00e9sis and takes the peloton to the legendary Roubaix velodrome, is almost 160 kilometers long and features a total of 23 cobblestone sectors, including the iconic Haveluy \u00e0 Wallers (2.5km), Mons-en-P\u00e9v\u00e8le (3km) and Carrefour de l\u2019Arbre (2.1km), which can have a huge impact on the final outcome.<\/p>\n
Team trainer Tim Declercq talked about Soudal Quick-Step Devo\u2019s ambitions for this weekend: \u201cWe are confident that we can do a good race. We aren\u2019t the big favourites, but we are aiming to have some of the guys in the finale. Erazem was runner-up in Roubaix as a junior and he could be one of the riders in the mix for a nice result, but also Jasper has a fair chance of fighting for a good result. The rest of the riders can support them but also prove themselves in the final part of the race, if they have the opportunity. For all of them, it will be a good opportunity to gain experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Photo credit: \u00a9Luc Claessen \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Our youth team is ready for the cobbles of the \u201cHell of the North\u201d. One of the biggest…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":597561,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-597560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=597560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/597560\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/597561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=597560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=597560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=597560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}