Immediate special mention – and a hopeful beating from the live hands of the nearby public – to the idiot who goes to watch Roubaix, a Roubaix of this level, and imagines deciding it by throwing a water bottle in Van Der Poel's face, who happens to be the race leader. How many times have we said: imagining that among a crowd of true fans, a complete moron isn't hiding, perhaps even drunk, is pure illusion. However, we have said that one can and must imagine identifying this total idiot and making him pay dearly, without resorting to a stoning with (full) water bottles, but with the tools of civil law. They exist. The good-will police have already applied them, it becomes mandatory and necessary that especially this time they are applied in such an important and beautiful race.

Roubaix already offers a sufficient catalog of mishaps & accidents, we can't add the target practice of idiots. Pogacar himself demonstrates this, who did not encourage the water bottle snipers, but still took his dose of bumps. And now to the race. Everything perfect at forty kilometers: from the natural selection of the species emerges the head-to-head imagined, dreamed, predicted, Pogacar against Vander, Vander against Pogacar. Direct duel, preparing for a memorable finale, with real-time predictions: Pogacar must drop him before, if they arrive together in the Velodrome Vander will devour him, but what are you saying, at that point only what's left in the tank matters, and so on, and so forth. But all the science and consciousness of the situation once again fly out the window thanks to the particular and inimitable spell of Roubaix, which is so unique and so fearsome precisely because at every meter, every stone, every turn it can overturn the lineup.

Indeed. Pogacar makes a not-so-serious wrong turn, from there he starts losing and Vander starts winning. In a terrifying duel at around 50, when the two see each other again and are divided by 12'', the second blow to Pogacar's teeth: puncture, bike change, bye mama. This time truly, this time with no possibility of straightening anything out. With the necessary supposition: even if he had caught up, with an unimaginable expenditure of watts, he would have arrived at the sprint like a chicken ready to be skewered.

The indiscreet charm of Roubaix. In the end, the best wins, the number one in flat races, practically no surprise, yet this edition still manages to close by opening another year of debates on the edge of what-ifs. Did Vander win or did Teddy lose? Would Vander have won anyway? Are we sure Teddy wouldn't have tried and retried until exhaustion to shake off Vander?

To the posterity the difficult verdict. One fact remains: this generation never misses an appointment, is never caught unprepared, never backs down a millimeter. I've seen too many Roubaix won by unknown honest fakirs, "miners" good only at breaking stones, to not appreciate the value of the nobility of this space age. Also this year, every monument has its high-class dominator: if it's not Vander, it's Pogacar, if it's not Pogacar, it's Vander. There's no room for nobodies these days. Or maybe there is: for those, I say with a heart dripping, only the Giro d'Italia is remaining.