The Tour de France winner took part in the one-day Paris-Roubaix race back in 2008 and, like most of its victims, remembers a challenge he had never experienced before

It's not be the longest – that's Milan-San Remo, the Spring classic – it may not feature the climbing profile of the Tour of Flanders or the "Race of the Falling Leaves", the Giro di Lombardia, and it's not the oldest of the five monuments of cycling – that's La Doyenne, Liège–Bastogne–Liège. But Paris-Roubaix, the "Hell of the North", deserves its reputation as the Queen of the Classics.

There is no other race quite like it. Thanks to the tireless work of "les amis de Paris-Roubaix", who jokingly refer to themselves as "les forcats du pavés" ("the convicts of the cobbles") – each year the race rolls out over the fields of Northern France on cobbled roads that date back to Napoleon.

The dense granite setts are roughly laid, as if thrown carelessly from a helicopter and beaten down roughly with the back of a spade. These are rural roads with a workaday purpose, not the elegant cobbled boulevards of Paris or the well driven cobbled routes of Flanders. And these fields are scarred with history.

When Victor Breyer, the cycling editor for Le Vélo, was asked to assess the feasibility of renewing the race after the first world war, he was appalled by what he saw: "Shell-holes one after the other, with no gaps, outlines of trenches, barbed wire cut into one thousand pieces; unexploded shells on the roadside, here and there, graves. Crosses bearing a jaunty tricolour are the only light relief." His companion on that journey in 1919 was the cyclist Eugène Christophe. The first Yellow Jersey in the Tour de France (though he would never take it to Paris) took one look at the desolation and exclaimed: "This really is the hell of the north."

It is a Sunday in hell; a race like no other. "At other races we drink coffee, shake each other's hands, have a laugh," says the Breton rider Guillhaume Blot. "But the morning of Paris-Roubaix no one speaks. It's war." Tour of Flanders winner Jacky Durand calls it "a different kind of cycling." Johan Van Summeren, who won the race in 2011, says: "If you're not scared, you're not ready. You need all your wits about you."

Blue skies and cobbles on the road from Paris to Roubaix. Photograph: Michel Spingler/AP

Steve Chainel says riding the cobbles takes everything: "Your liver, your thighs, fingers, arms, collarbones!" Each cobble is a hammer blow. Theo de Rooij said it best: "It's a shitty race! We ride like animals, we don't even have the time to take a piss so we piss in our shorts – it's a pile of shit." But would he come back and ride again? "Of course, it's the most beautiful race in the world."

Sean Kelly famously said: "A Paris-Roubaix without rain is not a true Paris-Roubaix. Throw in a little snow as well, it's not serious." Images of shell-shocked eyes in mud-caked faces are an instant passport to that mythological time of little sweeps and coal miners, hard men, "ouvriers de la pedale" escaping grinding poverty for a life on two wheels.

When Eddy Merckx crossed the line in 1973 to take the last of his three wins, he was caked in filth after a race that was lashed by rain and wind, and where night seemed to fall in the middle of a Sunday afternoon. It's a romantic image and one that we haven't seen in years – the last time a rider crossed the finish line with merde and mud caked thick on his features was in 2002, when Johan Museeuw wiped the filth from his face and crossed the line in the velodrome to heft the winner's trophy.

Belgian Johann Museeuw races the 2002 Paris-Roubaix with mud splattered on his face. Photograph: Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images

But even if the rain stays away there's still the dust – dust that clogs eyes and streaks faces, choking dust that gets into the lungs, dust clouds that kick up out of nowhere to obscure the wheel in front, the winning attack, the exact line across the treacherous granite. But the rain remains–- for the spectator safe on their sofa, at least – the arbiter of greatness on the cobbles.

The cobbles – these 15cm cubes that weighing around 10kg – are a skating rink when wet and a string of potholes when dry. They're alive beneath your feet, bedded on to sand, they move with the passage of vehicles and degrade with time. The work to repair them and keep the route a living thing is neverending and as ancient as time. They must be replaced stone by stone, by man not machine.

Francois Duclier, one of the "amis" calls Paris-Roubaix a "duel between man and pavé. A rider must be on form otherwise he'll crash. He must dominate the route, be tough mentally, be fast, be brave." The pavé is the most arbitrary judge of a rider in all of cycling - there are no tricks to being able to ride the cobbles and win. You need skill and you need luck.

Fans line the cobbled streets in 2010. Photograph: Martin Godwin

And after all that, one final test. After close to 260km, after one final stretch of cobbles, the road takes a sweeping right hander into the road that leads to the velodrome – the last great goosebump moment – delivering the riders on to the most famous concrete loop in the world. The vélodrome André-Pétrieux has welcomed the race finish since 1943. They play rugby on the grass that fringes the curvaceous concrete track.

It has seen better days; the paint is peeling, but the surface remains a smooth ochre sheet. For some it is a simple solo ride to the finish, cruising the banking towards victory. But if you enter the velodrome in a group you need another set of skills: the ability, after all that's gone before, to use your track smarts and outsprint the opposition, swooping off the banking as Guesdon did, coming over the top to become the last French winner.

And for his pains: for crossing those 27 sectors graded in difficulty from the one-starred Templeuve l'Epinette to the five-starred brutality of the Carrefour and the Arenberg; for driving his body and bike for close to six hours through that inhospitable, windblown landscape; for jumping and jarring every fibre until he wants to puke with fatigue; for this he receives €30,000 and a cobblestone that is beyond price. Supplied by a family of masons in Orchies, that simple lump of granite is the Jules Remy trophy of cycling. When Andrea Tafi finally took a famous, sentimental victory in 1999 he let the organisers know he wanted to use his pavé as the keystone of his new house. Obligingly, they provided another for his trophy cabinet.

As the grime and pain of a day in the hell of the north sluices away down the drain, each rider will find himself reflecting on disappointment or triumph in the velodrome showers. Simple open concrete cubicles, shoulder height, each bearing a brass plaque with the name of a previous winner, they are the final stop on the road that leads from Compiegne to Roubaix. "When I stand in the showers in Roubaix," Tom Boonen said in 2004, after finishing ninth behind Magnus Backstedt, " I actually start the preparation for next year." True to his word, Boonen scored his first win a year later.

Jacques Goddet called Paris-Roubaix "the last madness that cycling offers to its participants." At 280km, and originally designed as an appetiser for the monster that was Bordeaux-Paris (at 560km one of the longest races in cycling and the scene of Jacques Anquetil's legendary exploit in 1965, when he won there 24 hours after winning the Dauphine-Libere), Paris-Roubaix quickly outstripped its parent race.

Bernard Hinault famously called it "connerie" ("stupidity") and described the course designers as "torturers". "It's not a race I like, I don't think I ever will" growled the Badger. "There's nothing pleasurable about it. We have to ride it. It's our job." Hinault hated the cobbles, where he felt he'd been betrayed in the 1979 Tour, but won on them two years later in the Rainbow Stripes of the World Champion in a wet, miserable cowshitbath of a race suffering multiple punctures and crashes and winning by sheer force of will and bloody mindedness from a six-man group including that giant of the Classics, Roger de Vlaeminck aka Mr Paris-Roubaix. De Vlaeminck earned the nickname by winning the race four times, a record equalled only by fellow Belgian Tom Boonen. But de Vlaeminck is one of only three riders – with Rik van Looy and Eddy Merckx – to win all five monuments, prompting Boonen to declare himself not worthy of the comparison.

Gilbert Duclos-Lasalle won twice, with back-to-back victories in 1992 and 1993, and said of the experience "I hurt everywhere: hands, shoulders, back." Marc Madiot was another two-time winner (1985 and 1991), who then took Frederic Guesdon, riding for his newly minted Francaise de Jeux team, to a famous victory in 1997. Andrei Tchmil's victory in 1994 remains a favourite, the Ukrainian becoming the first Eastern bloc winner after launching a stinging, grimacing, brutal solo attack 62km from the finish – the longest in the modern era.

The Paris-Roubaix in 2000. Photograph: Gero Breloer/EPA

Jean Robic, the "Hobgoblin of the Brittany Moor", crashed and broke his skull on the cobbles in 1944. Tough and stubborn, he finished the race but ever after wore the leather skullcap that earned him another nickname, "tete de cuir". When Coppi won in 1950, he caught two breakaway riders, then calmly paused to eat an orange before urging them to press on. Coppi rode the last 100km alone for a glorious win. Of his breakaway companions, one ended the race in the broom wagon, the other retired a week later.

Jean Stablisnki may never have inscribed his name on Paris-Roubaix's palmarès but it was he who urged the "amis de Paris-Roubaix" to create the trouee d'Aranberg, that eerie tunnel through the forest that is one of the centrepieces of the race. As one journalist described it: "The race starts here in this awful prehistoric trench, the battle reducing men and machines to pieces." Aren't you sadists? Stablinski was asked. The great champion replied: "Maybe, a little. I want to keep the character of the race, if you do that a grand champion always wins."

It's the secteur de pavé that strikes fear and panic into the peloton's heart, where three-time winner Johan Museeuw crashed and smashed his knee cap in 1998. The wound turned gangrenous and the Belgian came close to losing his leg. But two years later, after a long and painful recuperation, he would return and win again, pointing at his scarred and battered kneecap as he crossed the finish line triumphant.

There have been other triumphs and tragedies. Superdomestique Johan Van Summeren's scream of joy after he triumphed in 2011 and then proposed to his girlfriend in the velodrome – she said "yes", and he said "some people give a ring when they propose, I gave a rock"; Steve Bauer's agonising 10-minute wait in 1990 to find out that he had lost the by less than a centimetre to Eddy Planckaert in the tightest finish in the race's history; George Hincapie's bewilderment as his handlebars came away and he crashed within touching distance of achieving his dream of winning the Queen in 2006; or Hennie Kuiper grabbing a brilliant victory from the disaster of a puncture in the closing kilometres of the 1983 race, the unbearable moments of waiting for a wheel erased in the joy of a solo victory.

Don't search for Roger Lapebie's name on the roll of honour, although they played the Marseillaise for him: puncturing 12km from the finish line with no support car in sight, Lapebie took a bike from a spectator. A woman's bike, which he quickly discarded. Finding another by the roadside, he caught Wauters and Rebry a kilometre from the finish line and outsprinted them both for a victory that never was. But rules are rules and, in 1934, a change of bikes was forbidden. To the angry boos of the crowd, Lapebie was stripped of the win.

The greats have ridden Paris-Roubaix: from Garin and Lapize, Pelissier and Maes to Bobet and Coppi, van Looy and Merckx and Kelly. But gone are the days when the Grand Tour riders like Hinault, Lemond and Merckx lined up in Compiegne ready to do battle with the Arenberg and Orchies and the Carrefour de l'Abre. Perhaps the watershed was 1988, when Laurent Fignon became the last GC contender to climb on the podium, finishing third behind Dirk Demol and Thomas Wegmuller, whose chances of victory were destroyed by the plastic bag that jammed his gears.

Two men have dominated the race in recent years, taking seven of the last nine wins between them. Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen are the Classics specialists of the modern era – a fascinating contrast in styles though both are of a similar height, weight and age. Cancellara is the elegant rouleur, the multiple World Champion time trialler who simply rides the rest of the race off his wheel – though his track skills in 2013 were far from shabby as he beat Vanmark in a perfectly judged sprint. Boonen is the true sprinter who battles across the cobbles and has the street smarts to take the win in the famous Roubaix velodrome – though he out Cancellarad Cancellara when he staged a bruising, dominant attack from 56km out in 2012 and rode to that record-equalling fourth win.

The official race report for 13 April 2008 says that a resurgent Tom Boonen beat Fabian Cancellara to claim his second cobblestone in the Roubaix velodrome. Also on the start line that dry, unexpectedly bright day in Compiegne was a 22-year-old Kenyan-born British rider in his first season as a pro. Sporting the vivid red and white of the South African Barloworld team, Chris Froome stood on the start line of the 2008 Hell of the North.

How did it feel to be there, at one of the Monuments of the sport? "I was both nervous and excited," he says. "I was looking forward to the challenge of the event, but also apprehensive that it was not something that I'd experienced before." Barloworld had been riding at the Profonde van Drenthe the day before, another cobbled race that bears the nickname "the Hell of the North". "I arrived at 2am the morning of the race because I'd competed in Holland on the Saturday and we'd driven through the night to get to the start at Roubaix," he recalls. "I don't remember where we stayed, I was just happy to get to bed."

Barloworld were staying in the Roihote, Roye, near Amiens – a clean, comfortable place that offers a "warm welcome" and a restaurant-bar. After a few hours sleep, Froome and his team-mates lined up to face the pavé: "On the team we had Baden Cooke and Robbie Hunter who were probably the most experienced with the cobbles, so I took advice from them on what to expect." After the race, Froome told his old mentor Robbie Nilsen that riding the cobbles had been "the easy part". Had he had the opportunity to do any reconnaissance before the race? "Unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to do any reconnaissance back then," says Froome, "but I will ahead of the 2014 Tour."

So if the cobbles themselves were the "easy part", was there anything he found difficult? "The fight for position ahead of the cobbles, rather than the cobbles themselves, which I thought felt similar to riding a time trial." So how was it? "I did enjoy the experience, as I'd never been part of a race like Roubaix before, the atmosphere out on the road was amazing with the number of spectators that came out."

But Froome wasn't at Paris-Roubaix as team leader "My role for the day had been to get in the early breakaway, which I failed to make," Froome remembers. "It took about 100km for the break to form and I'd spent a huge amount of energy trying to get into the breakaway, which eventually went without me. I remember being amazed at how fast the race was before arriving at the cobblestones in order to fight for position."

The break of the day – Matthé Pronk (Cycle Collstrop), Jan Kuyckx (Landbouwkrediet) and Alexander Serov (Tinkoff) – finally formed after 87km. Then the race split entering the infamous Arenberg Forest and when the peloton emerged from one of that most iconic sector of pavé, Baden Cooke was in a group of 28 riders with Boonen, Cancellara and Ballan who would finish first, second and third on the podium. Cooke eventually finished 31st, 11 minutes and eight seconds down on the winner.

Froome wasn't so lucky: "I didn't have any big expectations but I would have liked to finish. Unfortunately my race ended after I crashed into a commissaire's car. I had stopped to give my team leader (Baden Cooke) my wheel after he punctured before the forest of Arenberg. I was chasing back when the commissaire's car braked for a rider in front of them. I had to replace yet another wheel as I'd bent my front wheel when I crashed, by then the race had disappeared. I was riding toward the finish with Daryl Impey when the broom wagon picked us up." So he never made it to the infamous concrete showers.

But 2014 will see Froome face the cobbles again – this time in the Tour de France as the defending champion. All eyes are on how Team Sky will prepare for that crucial cobbled stage. Does he think his experience in 2008 will be useful? "We will head out to ride the stages, when is still to be decided. Any experience is useful but the stage recon will be crucial."

Does he think this is a key stage in the 2014 race or will the selection for the Tour be made elsewhere? "It's not a stage where you can win the Tour, but it's definitely a stage where you can lose the tour." That's what Eddy Merckx said about the Arenberg – "this isn't where you win Paris-Roubaix, but it's where you can lose it."

Who will be the key team-mates for this stage – Bradley Wiggins has stated his ambition to do well at Paris-Roubaix: if he rides it this year will he be a key superdomestique at the Tour? Froome is cagey: "The team selection will obviously be made closer to the Tour, but I'd hope to have someone like Yogi (Ian Stannard) with me."

Would he like to ride Roubaix again – a lot of fans would love to see a Yellow Jersey at the classics like in the "old days"? Froome clearly likes the idea, but is cautious: "I'd love to do Roubaix again but it's a big risk, if I were to get injured there ahead of the Tour de France. I'm more likely to do Liege Bastogne Liege or Milan-San Remo, with the hope of winning it."

Froome was on the start list for the Primavera until organisers RCS removed the Pompeiana and returned to a sprinter friendly course. There is one last question. Will Sky be using the new mesh skinsuits at Roubaix. Froome is coy: "It depends on the weather!"

On stage five of the 2014 Tour de France, the race will hit the cobbles of Northern France. For once, the GC contenders will be forced to confront this most testing terrain. As Eddy Merckx has noted: "It's a shame to say it, but Paris-Roubaix is losing more and more of its value because the great riders aren't there. I've always said that to win without risk is to win without glory."

Are the Grand Tour champions finally coming back to the Classics, seduced again by their history, their beauty and their cruelty? For those of us who think that the racing between La Primavera and the Doyenne is the greatest the sport has to offer, that can be no bad thing. As for Chris Froome – who has ridden his way from domestique to Yellow Jersey – it will be interesting to see how he enjoys his second bite of the granite cherry.

The cyclists line up to start the Paris-Roubaix race. Photograph: Philip Van Der Ploeg

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