Paris Roubaix 2014 EPIC CRASH!!

Paris Roubaix 2014 EPIC CRASH!!

Paris Roubaix 2014 Crashes.
Bradley Wiggins has always been particularly proud of the breadth of his cycling register, taking in as it does road, time trials and track events. After finishing the sport's most demanding one-day race, the Paris-Roubaix Hell of the North, in ninth place and on the heels of the winner, Niki Terpstra, after a six-hour stint through dust clouds and past vast dunghills on the back lanes of northern France, he can now add another category to the long list: Classics contender.

For a cyclist who once specialised in the four-minute pursuit, added the dizzying Madison and then moved on to win the Tour de France, hanging tough with the best one-day specialists such as Tom Boonen, four times a winner in Roubaix, and Fabian Cancellara -- a dominant victor of the Tour of Flanders the previous weekend -- is a feat that cannot be underestimated, and it left Wiggins delighted, even if he was disappointed not to have won.

"There's a tinge of disappointment. I really had legs, even in the final, I felt strong," Wiggins said. "I was pinching myself a little bit, I don't mind admitting that." The 2012 Tour winner kept a watching brief, which is the best policy in such a long, demanding event, but had the legs to be part of the elite 11-man selection that formed with only nine kilometres remaining, after the final two of the 28 sections of cobbled lanes that make the Queen of the Classics so demanding.

As so often in the past, the gently rising lane to the exposed crossroads at Carrefour de l'Arbre and its twin section to Gruson were critical, as a lead quintet formed around Cancellara, joined a few kilometres after the cobbles were left by a sextet including Wiggins and Geraint Thomas, who were unable to match Terpstra when he broke clear six kilometres from the finish.

"I just felt outnumbered," Wiggins said. "And the run-in was quite fast in the last five kilometres. Terpstra played it perfectly with [his team-mates] Stybar and Boonen." Indeed, Terpstra was able to play the team card, with his Omega Pharma-Quick-Step team boasting three of the 11 lead group. The chase behind was fitful, partly because any potential pursuers knew they would drag the Dutchman's team-mates into contention, but also because by this phase of Paris-Roubaix even those at the front have tipped over the edge into exhaustion.

Unfortunately for Wiggins, the only team-mate still on hand was Thomas and he was anything but fresh. He had left most of his energy on the road in an escape with Boonen which lasted over 40 kilometres of the final phase, and which ultimately proved fruitless. Terpstra rode into the velodrome finish with a 20 second advantage; behind him the sprint from the chasing group was won by the German sprinter John Degenkolb, with Thomas in seventh, and Wiggins ninth in the same time.

Thomas, once a winner of the junior Paris-Roubaix, is probably the best bet for a first British victory in the elite race at some future date but Wiggins has not ruled out a return either. This was, after all, the best ride by any cyclist with the Tour de France on his palmares in 22 years, since Greg LeMond -- then in the twilight of his career -- finished ninth in 1992.

Since Eddy Merckx's heyday in the 1970s, barely any Tour de France champions have braved the Roubaix cobbles, because there is a strong chance of crashing and compromising the build-up to the Tour.

Bernard Hinault famously won in 1981, while the late Laurent Fignon managed third in 1988, but these are rarities which put Wiggins's Sunday in Hell into perspective.