A common shower room isn’t usually something to get overly interested in.
Especially one as basic and simple as the cement stalls and metal tubing that hang from the ceiling in a crammed and otherwise squat, featureless building in northern France.
But when those showers are featured at the end of cycling’s most iconic one-day race, something special is born.
Paris-Roubaix is a throwback to cycling’s history, and so is the traditional of the post-stage shower room.
Paris-Roubaix is an oddity even by cycling standards. It’s a race contested over 19th-century roads raced with 21st-century bikes. Just as cycling pushes deeper into Formula One technology, Roubaix and its rituals remain moored to cycling’s past.
In a sport steeped in tradition, the showers in the annex building of Roubaix’s outdoor velodrome are an old-school reminder of how pro racing used to be.
Back in the day, racers would shower wherever they could after a race, be it in a local school or gymnasium. Or they would just towel down and pile into cars to drive back to a hotel.
By the 1990s, the arrival of the posh, fully built-out team buses meant riders can hit the shower moments after they crossed the line.
For years, only a handful of riders would even bother to head the Roubaix showers. The custom of hitting the Roubaix showers seemed to be dying, and only a few aged veterans or a curious newbie keen to learn and live a page of cycling history would trickle in.
“It’s part of the race. It’s tradition, so it’s important to be here, at least for me anyway,” said ex-pro and Eurosport commentator Philippe Gilbert, a Roubaix winner in 2019. “When you look back on the internet you can find some old movies and see the interviews being made here. It’s nice to go there.”
These days, the shower room and post-race ritual of showering in the facilities at the finish line at the Roubaix velodrome grounds is seeing something of a revival.
Through the encouragement of sport directors and a wider appreciation of the history that’s right at the fingertips, more riders are making the post-race shuffle into the Paris-Roubaix showers.
It’s a bit odd to see photographers snapping images of riders taking a shower in the buff, but it’s usually done with discretion and with the full approval of the racer.
“At least once in your career, you should have a shower in Roubaix. It’s old-school,” said 2001 Roubaix winner Servais Knaven. “You’re there with all the other riders. Everyone is tired, and everyone has their story to tell. You come there all together. It’s something special.”
What’s not so special are the showers themselves.
The squat concrete building with a generic white exterior sits unassumingly at the entrance of the outdoor velodrome. The adjacent building hosts a bar and a small museum.
The cold cement and basic cubicles remain unchanged from when they were built in the 1940s. In the old days, the entire peloton would pile into the showers to spray off the layers of mud and dust. If journalists wanted a quote, they would head to the showers.
After local organizers started posting metal plaques of each winner in the cubicles, the showers have become a rather odd type of cycling hall of fame for Roubaix.
“My name is in there. I’ve seen it a few times. It’s a special place,” Knaven said. “That’s where the guys like Merckx were before you. It gives you a connection to the history of the sport.”
Fully functioning with hot water, the showers also represent an end point to the cobblestoned classics. It’s both cleansing and purifying after such a brutal baptism of pain. For the pros that endure the rigors of Roubaix, the showers are a rite of passage.
“I used to go in there every year because it was a place you associated the end of the season,” said ex-pro Roger Hammond. “Good or bad, you go in there, and it’s a bit like closure to the classics. It’s a special place. That’s part of the beauty of cycling. The sport is a real equalizer. I would be in there with Johan Museeuw and a rider like myself.
“It’s not the nicest of place to take a shower, to be honest,” Hammond said. “It’s freezing cold and not much privacy. That’s the beauty of it. It was so grim in there that it was a way to finish off a grim race. Why would you have a nice, comfy seat in a cubicle to have a shower after 260km of hell? It was a race from hell, so they were the showers from hell.”
Many feel like they’re walking in the footsteps of history when they step into the Roubaix showers. It was here were Eddy Merckx and Roger De Vlaeminck would clean up after their epic battles.
On Sunday, Mathieu van der Poel showered there, and Canada’s first Roubaix winner Alison Jackson did the day before. Soon their names will be on plaques on the stalls.
It’s a unique page of history from cycling’s hardest race. Perhaps a shower is never so welcome as after a day in the “Hell of the North.”
0 Commentaires