It’s almost 11am in Louvignies-Quesnoy, a commune 70 kilometres south of Lille. St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 riders Caroline Wreszin and Alicia González are getting ready for a coffee ride.
“I watched your race yesterday, you did so well!” says Wreszin to her teammate, pulling on her cleats.
It’s an unusually warm day for early April, and sunlight spills into the open-plan living room space through two large windows. Outside, two or three girls are lolling on the wooden deck that surrounds a rectangular pool. Another sits cross-legged on an adjacent patch of lawn, reading. The clamour of the crowds at the weekend's Tour of Flanders has dissipated into the mellow sounds of the garden: the gentle beat of music coming from a speaker, the lapping of the water against the pool filter, and the rustle of pages. The team moved into the house last night, and will stay here while they prepare for Paris-Roubaix.
I notice a vase of flowers on the TV stand, which must be González’s prize bouquet for yesterday’s third-place finish at Ronde de Mouscron. I ask how it felt to race the day after Flanders; multiple crashes had made for a particularly nasty edition, and it’s difficult to fathom how anyone could ride the next day, let alone race.
“Riding both days is no different to a stage race,” González shrugs. The incredulous brutality of the Classics is standard practice for an athlete with over 12 years of experience. I feel silly asking.
Another rider, Elyne Roussel, now joins from a corridor left of the kitchen, along with the directeur sportif, Roxane Fournier, their cleats clip-clopping on the tiled floor.
“Forty kilometres. Out and back. On y va! Let’s go,” says Fournier, who will also be joining them on the ride.
The plan is to follow the group in the team car and join them at a café somewhere along the route. The houses, school, and tabac that make up the small village quickly peter out into the flat bocage landscape of the Écaillon river valley, where rapeseed fields are interspersed with telephone lines and windmills.
“Surely you know the Wizard of Oz? That’s what those fields looked like!”
We sit outside in a side-street in Valenciennes, where Wreszin is now Googling the American musical on her phone. The reference is lost on her confused European teammates and, as the waiter brings out our orders, the conversation quickly turns to the coffee. The unusual presentation of two watery Americanos – poured into beakers and topped with a straw – has awakened our cycling-adjacent coffee snobbery.
“In Spain, Americanos are a lot smaller. Two times an espresso maybe,” says González, laughing.
Despite being a French team, Saint Michel is made up of five nationalities – French, American, Canadian, Spanish, and Polish – and I’m intrigued to find out how having four different languages works over the radio on race days.
“The language we speak depends on who does the race. But the French all speak better English than we speak French. I’m learning. I just started my online lessons this week. I can understand much better when it’s slower,” explains Wreszin, who has moved from her home in California to Spain for her first professional season. “Alison [Jackson] reads children’s books to learn!”
As we sit in the shade sipping our drinks, the riders chat about life sans vélo – about their lives in Girona, where most of them are based in between races, and about the game of Uno that awaits them back at the house. Any talk of bikes that does crop up is casual and lighthearted, without the level of decoration so often used to describe the Classics. A race of mythic status suddenly feels undressed and real.
“I remember when you crashed on the Roubaix recon when you were a first year!”, says Fournier, putting her arm around Roussel. “So we did this recon, and there was so much mud, so it was really slippery. She crashed, and was just covered from head to toe in mud.”
The table erupts into giggles. González now turns to Wreszin, who will ride her first Roubaix on Sunday.
“Maybe you like the cobbles of Flanders, but it’s not the same! The new cobbles also are now at the beginning. Some years ago, you would try and break before the section, but this year it only starts after 20 kilometres,” she says.
González's explanation of Sunday’s parcours to her younger teammate, again imbued with wisdom, is symptomatic of the dynamics of a team whose oldest and youngest riders are 17 years apart. Stirring her coffee, she now speaks candidly about how things have changed.
“I’m happy to have experienced cycling before, because there’s so many memories that just wouldn’t happen today. There used to be seven people in one room sleeping before a race.
“But before you couldn’t get any money from your job, whereas now you do. There are lots of new races also, like Roubaix, Milan-Sanremo, and soon Il Lombardia maybe. It’s so exciting. And it’s all on TV too, which has bigger impacts for sponsors. The money comes, there’s lots of attraction for women, and so the sponsors come again.”
“It’s good to have girls like Alicia to remember sometimes, like, ‘don’t complain girls, because when you don’t know before!’” adds Fournier, throwing González a knowing look. The two were teammates at Movistar in 2019.
On the drive back to the house, I wind down the window to let some breeze into the car. The sun beats down fiercely, and the temperature on the dashboard has tipped over into the low twenties. If the inclement weather of spring lends to the definitive feel of Flanders and Roubaix, then today feels more like a Tour rest day. Rain is scheduled for Sunday, but for now, it’s summer.
***
“ALISONNNNNNNNN!”
The kitchen is filling up with people seeking both the coolness of the house in the afternoon heat and the prospect of lunch. Beckoned by the call of her name and the smell of tarte de pomme, Jackson comes running down the stairs barefoot and plonks herself down opposite me.
“Anyone want to do some aquasize in the pool later?,” she asks the table, grinning.
“Only if you are the leader!” says Clémence Chéreau, spooning rice onto her plate. At 20 years old, Chéreau and Roussel are the youngest riders on the team.
Clinking of cutlery on plates is interspersed with a mixture of French and English chatter, and it’s not long before we’re reclining on our chairs, satisfied after a meal of steamed fish, rice, and vegetables, followed by coffee and apple tart. The girls start drifting off, pulled back to the garden by the sleepy lull of mid-afternoon. González lies on the sofa in the living room to watch the final kilometres of Itzulia Basque Country, where her boyfriend is racing.
After lunch, I chat with Jackson outside on the deck. She notices the necklace on which I have my initials engraved, and I explain the similarities between our names.
“That’s really funny! How many times do people when you’re around them go, “I’m sorry Miss Jackson, oooooh!” she jokes.
Jackson is well-known for her vibrant personality, but I’m still surprised at just how relaxed she seems given the prominence of Roubaix on her race calendar. Jackson took the most important victory of her career after a dramatic sprint finish at the famous velodrome in 2023. Then riding for EF Education-TIBCO-SVB team (now EF Education-Oatly), she returns to this year’s edition as a leader and mentor for her younger teammates at Saint Michel.
“I’ve raced every weekend this year, so it’s good to have a day like today. Half the day will be like a no plan day, a true rest, or whatever feels good,” says the 37-year-old. “I think being in a home like this allows you space, and being outside, where you can separate, is so important. I think you need to miss your teammates – especially in races where it’s so hectic and brutal.
“To win any race on French soil for a French team would be pretty cool. I think it’s also something when you have a big win with a team that is quite young like this, for them to see that it’s possible. To be a part of that is awesome, especially when it’s a Monument.
“But then, I also learn from the others, like from Alicia, and even Caroline. Caroline is more particular about equipment and things, and she’s also really invested in knowing bike racing. She hasn’t raced a lot, but she really studies.”
Earlier, Wreszin had shown me a notebook containing several detailed drawings of racemaps, each twist and turn of the route marked out with extreme care. She adds notes to the bottom on raceday.
“When they start out young, they think their whole identity is that they are a cyclist. I always, sometimes without knowing, try to show a balanced life. I try to live authentically,” Jackson says.
In the small details of her intricately patterned acrylic nails and personalised bookmark, there’s a quiet proof she means it. Looking around the garden, the effect on her teammates is clear to see: reading, writing, drawing – all the while engaging in a quiet process of identity formation away from the saddle.
Having sat around the kitchen table with the team, it’s easy to see why this environment is crucial in such a busy race period, and especially before a race as tough as Roubaix. As we all took our places – riders, staff, and myself made for 12 in total – and began to pass round the food, Karolina Kumięga explained the importance of the small connections made over sharing food and stories.
“Compared to the other teams that I’ve been in, I feel that the atmosphere is way more family orientated, and you can see that in the staff, the riders, everything,” she says, pouring some water into my glass. “We’re also small, which I think helps.”
Kumięga previously rode for UAE Team-ADQ, one of the most prominent WorldTour teams in the sport, which makes her perspective particularly insightful. When I asked her if they ever felt intimidated by bigger teams, her response was blunt:
“I don’t care. I don’t feel like we are a smaller team. I’ve been in big teams, small teams, and I know that maybe some people care about that, but when we are in the bunch we don’t think about it, or we even use it to our advantage. There’s not as many expectations from the outside.”
***
Before I leave, I’m due to have a final chat with Fournier. She’s tied up with meetings in preparation for tomorrow’s recon, so I take time to sit outside and enjoy the waning sunshine. It’s almost six, but the air is still warm, and a gentle breeze stirs the clothes on the washing line – a mix of orange and green team kit, casual clothes, and T-shirts bearing the team’s slogan: “the cycling club with big dreams.” In another setting, this might sound corny or overstated, but after a day with the girls it stands to ring true. Racing as a ProTeam in a WorldTour event isn’t just a statement of intent, but is reflected in the ambitions of riders both old and young.
Emerging from the house with a stack of notes from her call, Fournier joins me on the deck. Tomorrow, the work will begin again: recons, press appointments, team meetings make for a hectic schedule before Sunday, when these six riders will line up to take on the finale of cycling’s Holy Week, the Hell of the North.
For now though, it can all wait. As they sit on the edge of the pool and dangle their feet into the water, it’s important that they make the most of this rare caesura in the chaos.
“Roubaix is so hard, you need to be really fresh without any stress before the race. Obviously you can’t think you’re on holiday, because you have work to do. But it’s a good choice to be this way,” says Fournier.
“We want to improve and grow step by step to become a better team, and to go to some big races. But we also want to keep this close connection between the riders, between everyone.
“We’re going for the win on Sunday. We know there are lots of big teams on the list. We are not quite at that level, but in Roubaix, anything can happen. We want to have this big ambition, because if you don’t, you never arrive at anything. We just need to believe it’s possible.”
