More cobbles and the Arenberg chicane replaced - Paris-Roubaix 2025 is safer but still hellish

The 2025 edition of the men's Paris-Roubaix will have two new sectors of cobbles and a different speed-slowing approach to the Forest of Arenberg, replacing the chicane from last year, that will keep the race hellish but should make it safer. Mathieu van der Poel won the 2024 Paris-Roubaix with a powerful 60km solo attack. Lotte Kopecky won the women's race in a six-rider sprint on the Roubaix Velodrome. 

The 122nd edition of Paris-Roubaix will be held on Sunday, April 13 over a distance of 259.2km. 

The fifth edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes will be raced the day before, on Saturday, April 12, on the same 163km route from 2024, which includes 29.2 km of cobbles and the same final 17 sectors of the men’s race but not the Trouée d’Arenberg. 

Race organisers ASO agreed with a request from the riders to add a chicane at the entrance of the Forest of Arenberg for the 2024 race. The last-minute change and a loop of a traffic island sparked huge debate but worked, slowing the pace of the peloton on the slightly descending straight road to the Forest of Arenberg. Instead of hitting the cobbles at 60km/h, riders turned onto the sector much slower, resulting in far fewer crashes.  

For 2025, the speed-slowing method will head down a "small detour" instead of the chicane, which includes four right-angle corners in the final kilometre before the entrance to the cobbled miners' track that cuts straight through the thick forest.  

"This year, we were able to find an alternative that allows the peloton to slow down more smoothly, a small detour that runs alongside the Arenberg mining site. With this trick, there will be four right-angle turns in the kilometre before the Trouée," race director Thierry Gouvenou explained.  

ASO doesn't give any details of the exact roads of the detour. They could include a section of road through the houses of Arenberg but are more likely to enter the Arenberg mine, which is now a museum. The route would swing left off the main road and then take the rue de Croy road through the area, before a right and then left turn that leads to the start of the Forest of Arenberg. 

The 2025 men's Paris-Roubaix will include a total of 30 cobbled sectors. The race will start in Compiègne and end in the iconic Roubaix velodrome. 

The first sector comes after the village of Troisvilles after 95km of racing. The last is a symbolic sector near the entrance to the velodrome. Gouvenou has added two new sectors, 30km before the Forest of Arenberg that could shake up the tactics and see attacks go even earlier.   

The new sectors are in Artres, after 130.9km of racing, lasting 1300 metres, and in Famars soon after, lasting 1200m. 

"These are not particularly difficult passages but by introducing them it allows us to have a sequence of five sectors almost without riding on asphalt," Gouvenou explained.