A gruelling cobbled toil over 143 kilometres distilled into a three-up sprint; a defending champion sacrificing herself for the greatest women’s cyclist of all time; and a career-defining victory for a rider who won her last WorldTour race in 2019.
By the time the leading group of this year’s Paris-Roubaix Femmes passed the flamme rouge, it had gone six o’clock. Crowds craned their necks to view the big screens which traced the race as it reached its final sacred laps around the Vélodrome André-Pétrieux. A day whose format – which saw the women’s race take place in the same afternoon and finish after the men’s – demanded denouement was about to arrive at its crescendo.
Franziska Koch was shocked after her formidable victory at the sixth edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes: "It's kind of hard to believe. I've been dreaming about it, I've been really hoping that it would work out, but Paris-Roubaix is a race where everything can happen, then in the end it worked out like a dream.
“To win against Marianne [Vos], it’s unbelievable. I was hoping I could win, but you can never be sure. She’s such a good rider.”
Paris-Roubaix is a career-defining win for Koch, who has only won one other WorldTour race Image credit: Getty)
Koch had been one of three riders to follow Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s decisive move on the Mons-en-Pévèle sector, which dropped 2024 winner Lotte Kopecky, until a battle between the FDJ-Suez rider and Visma Lease a bike’s duo of Ferrand-Prévot and Marianne Vos was to be settled in a dramatic final sprint. Once the trio reached the velodrome, Koch briefly moved high with Vos following before swooping in behind Ferrand-Prévot, who led the sprint. Koch and Vos then launched side by side, but it was the 25-year-old German who surged back at the line to win by the narrowest of margins.
That Koch would beat the most renowned and decorated athlete in women’s cycling by half a wheel length was probably not the outcome expected by the hoards gathered at the Roubaix velodrome this evening. Aside from two national titles, she has only won one other race, a stage of the 2019 Boels Ladies Tour.
But when asked if she was surprised at Koch’s performance in the final sprint, former world and Olympic champion Vos was blunt: “No. I’m not surprised. She’s just very, very strong, and I think she found out herself. Maybe for the general public, it’s not a big name yet, but I think it’s a big name on the list of honour.”
Fine margins: Koch showed super strength in her sprint in the dramatic finale (Image credit: Getty)
While today’s result might’ve seemed something like a reward for how Koch selflessly delivered Demi Vollering to triumph at last weekend’s Tour of Flanders as a domestique, it more accurately highlights her run of form during her first season at FDJ United-Suez, including fifth at Omloop Nieuwsblad and third at Strade Bianche.
“It’s a special race. We can make the best plan, but so much can happen on the road. We bought such a strong team, like three and one of my teammates could have won as well, but we have to make decisions, and I was one of the leaders today.
“I like winning myself, but if I can help Demi win a race, it’s also satisfying,” says Koch.
After claiming victory at the most prestigious one-day race in the sport, her humility seems baffling, but it only goes to show what it means to be part of a squad with the strength and depth of FDJ – who boasted this year’s Strade winner Elise Chabbey alongside Koch in today’s lineup.
Roubaix is the only victory missing from Vos’s glittering palmarès, and after two fourth place finishes and today’s second, today’s result hurt. Perhaps the 37-year-old deserved to win. Perhaps Visma could have shared the load in those final phases differently. But then the beauty of Roubaix lies in its levelling powers, and in its ability to write history again and again, in fonts and styles abound.
Roubaix is a race designed to be watched from start to finish. Unfortunately, the scheduling of the men’s and women’s race on the same day meant that that couldn’t happen. The consequences of that broadcasting decision are for a different discussion, and not one that should swallow the quality and tenacity of the racing on display.
To no surprise, today’s finale let sport do the talking. A true team performance from two of cycling’s giants, pipped to the post by a new victor. And so to Paris-Roubaix’s Femmes short history: six editions of the women’s race have produced six different winners from four different teams. Now that’s racing.
