I've already pulled together a speculative article on Tadej Pogačar's totally overhauled cobble setup for this season. The Slovenian superstar has swapped bikes and gone all in on bike hacks to give himself the best chance of moving up one place in the Paris-Roubaix rankings this year and taking his final Monument in what feels like a slightly inevitable victory (if not this year, then in the future).
The day before the Hell of the North, I managed to catch his bike at the back of the team bus, and in a frantic 60 seconds snapped the key details that make it such a wonderful bike to behold for tech fans. There are classic Roubaix mods like bigger tyres, but then there are some fantastic 'weight weenie' modifications like aftermarket thru-axles and a total lack of paint more or less anywhere on the bike or on key components.
Whether this is enough, and whether he'll be taken out of the race by a small stone getting lodged between the front tyre and the fork, remains to be seen, but he's given himself the best possible chance.
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