<\/p>\n
A puncture with 78 kilometres to go forced a messy bike change. Pithie managed to fight his way back, linking up with teammate Jordi Meeus and, briefly, even with the eventual winner Wout van Aert.<\/p>\n
But the race was beginning to slip. \u201cThat\u2019s where it all started going downhill,\u201d he said. \u201cContact lens fell out, crashed on Mons-en-Pevele, crashed again\u2026 it was a bit of a mess.\u201d<\/p>\n
The moment that truly derailed his race came on sector 12, with just over 50 kilometres remaining. A contact lens was blown out, a small detail with massive consequences on terrain.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes with the wind, when you look back, it just flies out,\u201d Pithie explained. \u201cIt’s only happened once before, but I mean, it’s just annoying because one side of the vision is clear and the other side is blurry.”<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, obviously I wasn’t taking the best lines. It would have played a part [in the crash].\u201d<\/p>\n
What followed was inevitable. On Mons-en-P\u00e9v\u00e8le, one of the race\u2019s sectors, Pithie hit the deck heavily while navigating a left-hand corner at the back of a chasing group led by Mathieu van der Poel, who was driving the pursuit of Van Aert and Tadej Pogacar up the road.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still felt pretty good at that point. I was just on the back of that group, hoping Van der Poel would do the work to bring us back. I still had hope to be in the mix, but yeah, it was game over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chaos didn\u2019t end there. In the aftermath, Pithie was involved in another incident, this time with a spectator.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hit a spectator on the side, coming out of a corner. I mean, the spectator was pretty close. We were going super fast, and yeah, I just ploughed straight into them. They were a little bit too close on the corner, over the road.”<\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re going so fast, it happens. I hope they’re okay, to be honest, because they didn’t sound too good on the ground while I was trying to get up and go again.\u201d<\/p>\n
By then, any hope of a top result had vanished. Still, Pithie pressed on, reaching the Roubaix velodrome and eventually crossing the line in 26th place.<\/p>\n
A result that hardly reflects the ride he had in his legs. \u201cIt’s disappointing, but it is what it is, it’s bike racing. This is such a crazy race. So much stuff happens. You need to have a bit of luck,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The frustration was clear, but so was the hunger. \u201cI\u2019ll be back next year. I still love this race. I didn’t even make it to the cobbles last year because of the crash, so, yeah, this will only fuel the fire for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A puncture with 78 kilometres to go forced a messy bike change. Pithie managed to fight his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605627,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,273238,165754,39733,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-605626","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-laurence-pithie","12":"tag-paris-roubaix","13":"tag-red-bull-bora-hansgrohe","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605626","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=605626"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605626\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605626"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605626"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605626"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}