Laurence Pithie appeared to drop some F-bombs after he finished Paris-Roubaix. The 21-year-old Kiwi was in the front group yet again and was riding the cobbles of northern France like a veteran alongside teammate Stefan Küng.
Then Pithie suddenly lost contact when he crashed on a corner before the Templeuve cobbled sector with 33km to race. He had been in the five-rider group chasing eventual winner Mathieu van der Poel but suddenly lost any chance of a podium spot.
“There’s a sense of disappointment for me. I can look back at my race and also be happy with seventh, but I could have been playing for the podium,” he told Cyclingnews, Escape Collective and other media in the centre of the Roubaix velodrome, his face still covered in mud and blood after his race and crash.
“My head got big, I made a mistake, and I crashed, taking me out of that group,” he explained.
“I just went too fast into a gravel corner. I misjudged it and wiped myself out. I went full gas to try to come back but when you’ve got Pedersen, Politt chopping off, it’s hard to get back.”
Pithie hugged Küng after they finished fifth and seventh, even apologising for his crash.
“I let the team down today,” Pithie said, letting his crash overshadow yet another impressive performance.
“We never got to play our cards because I crashed. Without that mistake, we could have used our numbers in front to execute our race plan.”
Pithie may be a few steps below van der Poel, like everyone in the 2024 peloton, but he is arguably the revelation of the Spring Classics.
He won the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Classic back in January. He then impressed at Paris-Nice, was 15th at Milan-San Remo and Classic Brugge-De Panne and joined the attacks in almost every race he started, from Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne to Gent-Wevelgem.
His 2024 results place him in the top 15 of the rankings, and not surprisingly, he has been linked to Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe for 2025.
“I didn’t do the Classics last year and so this is my first real Classics season,” accepting the crown of revelation of the spring Classics.
“I’ve had some really nice results and also been upfront in the race with guys like Mathieu van der Poel and Wout Van Aert, so it’s good for the future.
“I'll come back to the Classic next year and try to fight to win or be on the podium.”
Küng had no recriminations for Pithie’s crash, knowing that Groupama-FDJ was also a true Classic team of the spring, up there with Alpecin-Deceuninck and Lidl-Trek.
The Swiss rouleur rode well all race but ran out of energy and finished fifth, just 15 seconds behind the Philipsen-Pedersen-Politt sprint for the Paris-Roubaix podium.
“I was completely empty and couldn’t follow on the second last sector. But I have no regrets or disappointment,” he told Cyclingnews.
Küng and Pithie, like everyone else, could only bow their heads quietly and accept van der Poel’s dominance.
“You don’t do what he did if you're on the same level as everyone else,” Pithie explained.
“He really is a level above everyone. We tried to chase him, but he just kept riding away from us. There's not much you can do against a rider of his calibre. It was impressive what he did.
Küng added, "I can only say ‘Wow!’ to Mathieu. He was on another level again. He’s the best in the world; he’s one level above the rest.”
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