{"id":519428,"date":"2026-04-08T11:33:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T11:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/519428\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T11:33:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T11:33:14","slug":"these-are-most-successful-paris-roubaix-riders-of-all-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/519428\/","title":{"rendered":"These are most successful Paris-Roubaix riders of all time"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paris-Roubaix has an outsized place in the cycling consciousness. With the exception of the Tour de France, it\u2019s cycling\u2019s most famous race, outshining other classics such as the Tour of Flanders and Li\u00e8ge\u2013Bastogne\u2013Li\u00e8ge, which was first run in 1892 and is the oldest race still in the calendar.<\/p>\n

Paris-Roubaix<\/a> isn\u2019t far behind Li\u00e8ge, with the first race in 1896 won by the German Josef Fischer<\/a>. But more than any current race, Roubaix’s cobbles hark back to the early days of cycle racing, before roads were converted to tarmac.<\/p>\n

That history and the untamed cobbles have led to some famous victories and epic moments over the race\u2019s 125 editions. Here\u2019s BikeRadar\u2019s guide to the riders who have made Paris-Roubaix their own.<\/p>\n

The kings of the cobbles
\n\"BikeRadarRoger de Vlaeminck second wheel to Eddy Merckx at Paris-Roubaix. AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Two riders have won Paris-Roubaix four times, both Belgian. The first was Roger de Vlaeminck, who triumphed in 1972, 1974, 1975 and 1977. De Vlaeminck won all five of cycling\u2019s one-day Monument races, including three editions of Milan-San Remo and two of the Giro di Lombardia, as well as six consecutive Tirreno-Adriatico stage races.<\/p>\n

He was followed to four wins by Tom Boonen<\/a>, who won in 2005, 2008, 2009 and 2012. Boonen, too, had a glittering career in the cobbled Classics, winning the Tour of Flanders three times, including in 2005 when he also won the World Championships, alongside Flanders and Roubaix.<\/p>\n

The hat-trick club
\n\"\"Octave Lapize won Paris-Roubaix in three consecutive years, as well as the Tour de France in 1910. Roger Viollet via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Eight riders have each won three Paris-Roubaix titles, including Eddy Merckx, Johan Museeuw and Fabian Cancellara.<\/p>\n

Of the eight, three have won three years in a row. The first was Octave Lapize in 1909, 1910 and 1911. Lapize also won the Tour de France in 1910, before dying in the First World War aged 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was almost 70 years before Italian Francesco Moser repeated the feat, with wins in 1978, 1979 and 1980. Paris-Roubaix was Moser\u2019s most successful race, but he was also world champion in 1977, and won the Giro d\u2019Italia overall in 1984 and its points classification four times.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another four decades later, Mathieu van der Poel, the current Paris-Roubaix champion, has won the race in 2023, 2024 and 2025, the three fastest editions ever, all covering the parcours of around 160km at over 46km\/h.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Modern masters \u2013 who\u2019s dominating these days?
\n\"\"Van der Poel battled it out with Poga\u010dar\u00a0at the head of the 2025 race. Getty Images<\/p>\n

More than any other road race, Paris-Roubaix favours riders with great bike-handling skills. There\u2019s no one better here than van der Poel, so he must be favourite to win a record fourth consecutive edition. Witness his complete dominance in winning an eighth UCI Cyclo-cross World Championship this year and his impressive swerve to avoid a crash on the Molenberg when he won the 2026 Omloop Nieuwsblad.<\/p>\n

Asked what he learned from the 2025 edition of Paris-Roubaix, Tadej Poga\u010dar replied: \u201cThere\u2019s a right turn at 38 kilometres.\u201d That\u2019s where he crashed and lost van der Poel. We\u2019d guess Poga\u010dar has learned that corner, so he\u2019s a hot contender to mop up his last outstanding Monument and, maybe, with Milan-San Remo already in his pocket, all five Monuments<\/a> in one year.<\/p>\n

With a reasonably flat parcours, Paris-Roubaix can favour those with a sprint in their locker. Mads Pedersen has come third in the last two editions and was fourth in 2023. If he\u2019s still a contender when the race reaches the velodrome, he could clinch the win this year.<\/p>\n

Wout van Aert is, like van der Poel, a multiple cyclocross world champion, so he can handle the cobbles. Following a crash in 2024, he had a slightly below-par 2025 season, despite winning the final stage of the Tour de France. However, at this year\u2019s Milan-San Remo, he was closing fast on the leaders, Poga\u010dar and Tom Pidcock (another skilled bike handler) before finishing third.<\/p>\n

This year’s women\u2019s race is more open than the men’s, but don\u2019t discount a second consecutive win for\u00a0Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, a superb all-rounder with world championships in mountain biking, gravel, cyclocross and on the road, and the 2025 Tour de France in her palmar\u00e8s.\u00a0<\/p>\n

First of the few
\n\"Paris-RoubaixLizzie Deignan rode away from the field on the first cobbled section in 2021 and soloed 80km to victory. Getty Images<\/p>\n

While the men\u2019s race has seen 122 editions to date, there have been only six women\u2019s Paris-Roubaix races. The first winner was Lizzie Deignan, who won solo<\/a> in a muddy autumn race in 2021.<\/p>\n

Deignan attacked as soon as the race hit the first cobbled section, with 80km of the 115.6km parcours still to ride. She was still over a minute ahead at the finish line in the Roubaix velodrome, with her ride labelled one of the greatest Paris-Roubaix rides of all time.<\/p>\n

The last muddy winner
\n\"\"Sonny Colbrelli was the last rider to win a properly muddy race, in October 2021. <\/p>\n

Paris-Roubaix is notorious not just for its cobbles, but also the mud. That\u2019s changed in recent years, as April in northern France turns drier.<\/p>\n

There has been one exception, though \u2013 the 2021 race, which took place in October, having been postponed due to the Covid pandemic. It was won by Sonny Colbrelli<\/a> of Team Bahrain Victorious, who took just over six hours to complete the course and arrived in the Roubaix velodrome caked head to toe in mud.<\/p>\n

Contrast that with van der Poel\u2019s 5 hours, 25 minutes and 58 seconds winning time three years later, over essentially the same course, and you can see how much more difficult wet conditions make the race.<\/p>\n

Most iconic 1-2-3
\n\"Paris-RoubaixMapei’s 1996 1-2-3 is perhaps the most famous Paris-Roubaix finish. Getty Images<\/p>\n

Johan Museeuw<\/a>\u2019s first Paris-Roubaix win in 1996 saw a trio of riders from the same Mapei team take the first three places, with Gianluca Bortolami second and Andrea Tafi third, all over two minutes ahead of the fourth-placed Stefano Zanini. Another Mapei rider, Franco Ballerini, who won in 1998, came fifth.<\/p>\n

The image of the three Mapei riders finishing together in their classic kit is probably the most famous Paris-Roubaix finish line photo ever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paris-Roubaix has an outsized place in the cycling consciousness. With the exception of the Tour de France, it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":519429,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-519428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519428\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/519429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}