Paris-Roubaix 2022 LIVE - Can Wout van Aert pull off stunning return and stop Mathieu van der Poel?

Stay tuned for live comments from Nick Christian on Sunday Ad/> Who is riding? Paris — RoubaixParis-Roubaix 2022: Can Van Aert take Van der Poel down?12/04/2022 AT 14:19 Defending champion Sonny Colbrelli (Bahrain Victorious) will not defend his crown as the Italian battles back from a career-threatening heart problem that surfaced during the Volta a Catalunya. The 2019 champion Philippe Gilbert (Lotto Soudal) is focusing on the Ardennes while there are ongoing doubts over the inclusion of Peter Sagan (TotalEnergies) as the Slovakian continues to struggle with apparent long-Covid.

This means the most recent champion taking to the start may be the Belgian Greg van Avermaet of Ag2R-Citroen – and we can probably all agree that his best days are behind him. The 2017 winner will be joined by Sagan’s team-mate, the Dutch 2014 champion Niki Terpstra – for whom the previous aside rings even truer – ditto the German 2015 winner John Degenkolb (Team DSM).

Now let’s look at the startlist in a more positive fashion. The in-form riders with a good shot of winning the men’s edition include two riders who have yet to add a cobblestone trophy to their busy mantlepieces – Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Fenix) and Wout van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) – as well as a bunch of riders for whom momentum has been building during the spring campaign: Alexander Kristoff (Intermarche-Wanty-Gobert), Mads Pedersen (Trek-Segafredo), Stefan Kung (Groupama-FDJ), Christophe Laporte (Jumbo-Visma) and Michael Matthews (BikeExchange-Jayco).