Cortina, the fastest in the Carrefour de l’Arbre

The Paris-Roubaix always leaves memorable moments. Dylan van Baarle, by winning the race after getting out of control in 2021, wrote another page of his legendary story. The image of Sonny Colbrelli at the Roubaix Velodrome, celebrating covered in mud, after a race in harsh weather conditions, is another example of this. No two editions are the same they all find their niche in mysticism that identifies the test.

Much of the aforementioned idiosyncrasy, so special, comes from its three sections of maximum difficulty. Five stars that demand the maximum from the entire platoon. The Trouée d’Arenberg, with its iconic landscape, 95.3 km from the finish, is the first of them. Then comes El Mons-en-Pévèle, with three kilometers of cobblestones, and, finally, the Carrefour de l’Arbre, 17.2 km from the endcharacterized by its dreaded curves.

In them, it is always interesting to check who has been the fastest. In this edition, the Spanish Iván García Cortina, from Movistar, 25th in the final classification, wrote his name in the Carrefour de l’Arbre, completing it in 3:12 minutes, according to Strava. In the other two sections, Filippo Ganna (Ineos) and Stefan Küng (Groupama), on the one hand, and Timo Roosen and Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma), on the other, share honors. The first two, with a time of 3:11, were the best at the Trouee d’Arenberg; the latter, at Mons-en-Pévèle (4:41).