For more than a hundred years, the cobbled roads of Paris-Roubaix were considered so tough that they required all manner of specialist equipment.
From one-off frames with increased tyre clearance (and occasionally suspension) to high-spoke-count wheels with box-section rims and specialist tyres, riders shunned their everyday race bikes in favour of equipment designed to withstand hours of abuse on Northern France’s worst roads.
But when Fabian Cancellara soloed to victory in the Roubaix velodrome in 2010, he ushered in a new era of using aerodynamic carbon wheels and kit to conquer the infamous Hell of the North.
Post 2010, the tide turned definitively on specialist equipment, and the race hasn’t been won using ‘traditional’ wheels since.
Instead, aero has well and truly taken over at Paris-Roubaix, in all aspects of kit.
After a stuttering start in previous years, though, it was Cancellara’s barnstorming 2010 Classics campaign that cemented Zipp’s legendary 303 wheels as an icon of road cycling tech.
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Crushing the cobbles
Following a lacklustre campaign in 2009, Cancellara crushed his rivals at the 2010 Spring Classics.
Completing one of the most prestigious doubles in road cycling, Cancellara dropped Belgian star Tom Boonen (and everyone else) in emphatic fashion and soloed to victory at both the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix.
These victories were so dominant that former pro Davide Cassini would soon after accuse Cancellara of cheating, claiming the Swiss champion had used a hidden motor in his bike.
Amid the controversy, however, the obvious differences between Cancellara’s bike setups were lost on many people.
Boonen used old-school wheels, built with a multitude of round spokes and box-section rims, paired with relatively narrow Continental tubular tyres (these were most likely 25mm wide, given that’s what he’d used to take his third Roubaix victory the year before).
Cancellara, on the other hand, opted for Zipp’s radically wide 303 carbon aero wheels, with half as many spokes and a set of wide FMB Paris-Roubaix tyres.
The Zipp rims used a toroidal design, which saw the rim bulge out to 27.5mm. In an era when most aero wheels were designed around the narrow, 23mm tyres racers most often used, this was a radical departure from the norm.
The rim’s 45mm-deep aerofoil section and reduced spoke count also provided a tangible performance benefit.
Speaking to BikeRadar’s James Huang in 2010, Zipp’s technical director, Josh Poertner, said the brand’s testing with Cancellara’s team had shown up to “a 20+ watt differential from the traditional wheelset to the 303" in certain scenarios.
That the wheelset weighed only 1,152g probably didn’t help much, given Paris-Roubaix is a mostly flat affair, but it clearly didn’t hurt either.
Rude awakenings
In a way, it’s remarkable a carbon wheelset so light could withstand the rigours of Paris-Roubaix.
It’s fair to say, however, that Zipp had a rude awakening when it first tried to encourage its pro teams to switch from ‘traditional’ wheel setups to something modern.
Part of the problem, Poertner later noted in a blog post for Silca, was that practically all the top teams and riders believed the traditional, 32-spoke, box-section wheels were not only more durable but also more comfortable.
In contrast, aero wheels of the time had a reputation for being stiff and harsh.
After some internal testing, which proved the opposite to be true, and demonstrations of the aero differences in the wind tunnel, Zipp’s first attempt at convincing its sponsored teams to use its carbon wheels at Roubaix came in 2007.
Poertner says Zipp took Team CSC and 20 wheelsets to the Trouée d'Arenberg – the race’s toughest and most iconic cobbled secteur – for testing, but “the team were able to break every single one of them. It literally took minutes”.
Undeterred, Poertner and his team went back to the drawing board. By 2008, Poertner says the team had Zipp 404 aero wheels “measuring equal in radial stiffness to the Ambrosio Crono wheels, but at more than 2x the impact strength of before”.
Testing with 28mm tyres prior to Roubaix ”showed no issues”, Poertner says.
On the big day, though, 2004 winner Magnus Bäckstedt, of Slipstream–Chipotle, broke both his wheels and was put out of contention.
Zipp was, Poertner says, “thrashed in the media for attempting this” – with accusations that the brand had put “sponsor desires above rider safety”.
The morning after the race, though, Poertner received a phone call from a relaxed Bäckstedt, who admitted to not being at his usual race weight that year, and, crucially, that he had switched to 24mm tyres the night before the race (because narrow tyres were thought to be faster in the dry).
How tyres affect rim durability
Following 2008’s disastrous run, Poertner says Zipp suddenly realised the importance of wider tyres in protecting the rims.
“The difference between 24 and 27mm tires was the difference between making it through the [Arenberg] forest and walking,” Poertner says.
This is because, as you go up in tyre sizes, you not only get extra width but also extra height and air volume, all of which helps to protect the rim from being impacted by the sharp edges of cobbles.
As a result, Zipp started designing rims that were aerodynamically optimised for use with wider, 27-28mm tyres.
The shape of the aerofoil section was also tuned to aid compliance, with a section that bulged out wider than the brake track added to enable the rims to flex more in response to heavy impacts.
Although it was yet to convince Cancellara’s Team CSC, Cervélo TestTeam (another of the WorldTour teams Zipp sponsored at the time) eventually bought into the new wheels and tyres after riding the cobbles with a power meter and seeing the differences in effort required in real time.
Thor Hushovd duly secured third place using the wheels, and the first podium finish for carbon wheels at Paris-Roubaix.
Convincing Cancellara
Despite the success in 2009, Poertner says Cancellara was still yet to be fully convinced about the wide Zipp wheels and bigger tyres they were designed for, heading towards the 2010 edition.
“Remember that he had won the event previously on the old-world wheels and tires and wasn't sure that he wanted or needed the new technology”, Poertner says.
He also noted that aerodynamic improvements are hard to feel, especially when you’re riding at maximum effort, and that wind tunnel results can be hard to trust.
More real-world testing changed Cancellara’s mind, though, because it showed the wider rims and tyres – and the lower tyre pressures they enabled – were not only significantly faster on the cobbles, but also on the crucial paved sections in between, where critical attacks often happen.
Having finally convinced Cancellara, the rest is history – with a little less than 50km to the finish, the Swiss champion noticed Boonen slipping to the back of the bunch and put in a seated attack on an innocuous section of tarmac road.
With more than 200km in the legs, everyone in the favourite's group looked to Boonen – the reigning champion – to bring him back, but it was no use. Cancellara steamrolled through the remnants of the race's early breakaways and reached the Roubaix velodrome two minutes ahead of the closest finishers, Hushovd and Juan Antonio Flecha.
Boonen, spent from his attempts to bring Cancellara back, finished a distant fifth, another minute and 14 seconds behind Hushovd and Flecha.
Roubaix will never again be won on the old wheels
Following his victory, Poertner says “Cancellara later commented to the media that 'Roubaix will never again be won on the old wheels', as there was 'too much advantage' to the new technology.”
Apocryphal tale or not (we can’t find any evidence of it online, although that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen, of course), the statement has turned out to be true.
Zipp’s innovation and Cancellara’s victory kickstarted an aero revolution at Paris-Roubaix, which other riders could no longer ignore.
Only a year later, for example, Johan Vansummeren not only used carbon aero wheels to win the 2011 edition of the race, but also Castelli’s recently designed Sanremo Speedsuit, and in 2016 Matt Hayman won using a full-on aero road bike.
In the years since, traditional box-section rims have joined the ranks of lost tech that once defined Paris-Roubaix, alongside endurance bikes and road bike suspension systems.
In fact, given modern-day stars, such as Mathieu van der Poel and Mads Pedersen, simply opt for their everyday aero race bikes plus some chunky tyres nowadays, you might even argue Paris-Roubaix tech has got somewhat boring in recent years.
Thankfully, though, the racing rarely disappoints, and we can be sure there are plenty more technological revolutions on the horizon, just waiting to go mainstream.
