Double rainbow over Roubaix velodrome: The GCN Racing News Show

There has been an awful lot happening in the last seven days of road racing, not all of it good news, but we’ll come onto that later. Instead Dan Lloyd begins this week's show in a positive frame by looking back at the weekend’s climax to the cobbled Classics: Paris-Roubaix.

For the second weekend in a row, Alpecin Deceuninck were on the start line as clear favourites for the men's race, and once again they and the unrelenting Mathieu van der Poel lived up to the billing.

Read more: Paris-Roubaix: Mathieu van der Poel defends title with 60km solo exhibition

Dan gives us his thoughts on how that race panned out, looking at where the tactics succeeded and failed and where there were slight moments of concern. Although in truth they were few and far between as Van der Poel once again stamped his authority on the race in commanding style.

It's been a familiar pattern of late, which saw Van der Poel become the first rider to do the Flanders/Roubaix double since Fabian Cancellara, and the first to do so in the rainbow bands since Rik Van Looy in 1962. Perhaps unsurprisingly there were a host of other incredible statistics to emerge from the weekend that Dan highlights. Without repeating them all here's a little taster.

Mathieu van der Poel had an average speed of 47.8kph for almost all of the 260km race distance. A pretty phenomenal achievement given the number of corner and cobbles there are to content with. While his winning time of 5 hours, 26 minutes was a whole three minutes faster than teammate Jasper Philipsen who finished in second place. Incredible stuff.

The women's race was a much more cagey affair with Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx-Protime) trying to establish a leading group but never able to shake the irrepressible Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) or Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek). Dan dissects the intriguing battle which ultimately came down to a group sprint in the velodrome. Kopecky drew on all her power and track experience to hold off the chasing group for the first Roubaix win of her career.

Serious crash at Itzulia Basque Country

Onto the headline-grabbing news from last week's Itzulia Basque Country which had been one of the most anticipated races of the early season, with some of the pro peloton's biggest names in attendance.

Unfortunately it made headlines for all the wrong reasons as a horrific crash on Stage 4 involving Primoz Roglič (Bora-Hansgrohe), Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Remco Evenepoel (Soudal Quick-Step) saw each of them sustain significant injuries that could have an impact on the remainder of races this season. Dan runs through the extent of those injuries and what that might mean for those individuals and their recovery in time for some of the big upcoming races. We of course wish them all a speedy recovery and hope to see them back in action very soon.

For the latest news, interviews and analysis from the world of professional cycling, be sure to check out the Racing tab on the GCN website and visit our essential guide to The Spring Classics to stay up to date with all of the action from cycling's most exciting season.

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