8 conclusions from Paris-Roubaix Femmes 🇫🇷
How Franzi Koch overcame Visma-Lease a Bike’s double punch, TV coverage woes, and other analyses
Hi Subscribers,
Paris-Roubaix Femmes rarely offers straightforward answers. It’s a race defined as much by chaos as by strength, where tactics, timing, luck, and sheer resilience collide on the cobbles of northern France. The 2026 edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes was no exception, delivering a breakthrough victory, near-misses steeped in emotion, tactical miscalculations, and broader questions about the sport itself.
From Franzi Koch’s emergence as a leader to the fine margins that denied Marianne Vos, from team performances that impressed to others that will prompt reflection, and from rising talents to ongoing issues off the bike, here are eight conclusions from a compelling and complex day in Roubaix.
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Koch grasps leadership opportunity at FDJ United-Suez 🇩🇪
Six weeks ago, after Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, I wrote that Franzi Koch was an inspired off-season signing for FDJ United-Suez. But I hadn’t expected her to be quite so good, with her Paris-Roubaix Femmes victory the icing on the cake of a stellar spring campaign.
The 25-year-old had been an invaluable lieutenant to Demi Vollering in Omloop and the Ronde, as well as to Elise Chabbey in the Strade Bianche, helping her teammates to victory by performing every task she was given to perfection, whether it was pulling Vollering on the Vesten, attacking time and again on the run-in to Siena, putting the peloton on the ropes on the Eikenberg or leading out Vollering into the Oude Kwaremont.
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