A dream and a good day in Hell - Inside Cole Kessler’s first Paris-Roubaix

For Cole Kessler (Modern Adventure), though, this was never going to be just another race, nor even just another Monument. It was the race he had been carrying with him for years, the one that had lived somewhere between ambition and imagination ever since he first started watching it on television, and the one he believed, quietly but firmly, could change everything if the right day ever came along.

“I’ve spent the last four, five, six years dreaming of racing Roubaix,” he said.

That dream, as it turns out, does not begin on the cobbles. It begins the night before, when sleep comes in fragments and the body refuses to settle.

“I was pretty nervous… didn’t have the greatest night’s sleep.”

By morning, the romance has already given way to routine, or at least something resembling it. Breakfast is taken on the move, somewhere between logistics and necessity, a full box of Frosties eaten on the team bus during a long transfer to the start.

“I had like 500 grams… a hell of a lot of carbs,” he said, half amused by the memory.

It is not perfect preparation, but perfection is not really the point here. Roubaix does not reward control so much as it tests how riders respond when it disappears.

He lines up early, partly out of instinct, partly out of intent, and finds himself on the front row as the race rolls out, shoulder to shoulder with his teammates and other young, ambitious riders he has known since his junior days, including a close friend in Colby Simmons (EF Education-EasyPost).

“Starting a Monument next to a buddy I’ve raced with since I was a junior… that was pretty cool,” he said.

For the first two hours, Paris-Roubaix is not yet Roubaix in the way it is remembered, not yet defined by cobbles or sectors or iconic names, but by something far simpler and brutal: pure pace.

“I was trying to go for the break for two hours. Over 50k an hour… nothing went,” Kessler said about the dozens of attempts by riders to get up the road before the big names would make their move, hoping to sneak as far into the finale as possible.

The relentless onslaught at least led to one result for Kessler: “I did my fastest 100 miles ever… over 50k an hour average.”

By the time the first cobbled sectors approach, the race is already taking on a different form, shaped by fatigue and the creeping realisation that your original plan no longer applies. “I had to refocus when I realised the break wasn’t going,” he admitted.

Ahead, the road narrows, the speed holds, and the tension sharpens for the first cobble sectors. "It is sketchy, man. You’re locking up brakes, skidding, sliding, avoiding stuff,” the young American said.

Roubaix, once it begins properly, rarely unfolds in a straight line. It comes in waves, physical and mental, each one slightly different from the last.

“Three hours in, you’re fucked and you have no idea how you’re going to finish,” he said.

And then, just as suddenly, it shifts.

“You come around again… you feel good… then bad again. It’s a rollercoaster.”

He makes it through the early sectors in the front group, but the cost of those opening hours is already there, hidden for a moment, then impossible to ignore. After a handful of sectors, the elastic stretches and finally snaps, and the race he had hoped to follow moves just out of reach.

“I got tailed off a bit… then found a second group.”

But Roubaix doesn’t end when you lose the front. It just turns into a different race.

At some point it all blends together. You’re hurting, but the crowds are on top of you, the noise keeps building, and the road feels like it’s closing in.

“The fans were crazy. My ears are still ringing,” he said.

Smoke flares hang in the air, beer spills onto the roadside, and riders pass through corridors of sound that feel almost tangible. “It was the most incredible experience of my life.”

And within that noise, something smaller, more personal, still finds its way through. “I can always pick out my dad’s voice”

And then, at the end of it all, there is the Velodrome. After hours of noise and compression, it opens up, wide and final, a space where the race slows just enough for everything to catch up with you.

“The moment you realise your dream has come true… it’s pretty cool,” he said.

His parents are there. He hears them before he sees them. And for a brief moment, the race gives something back.

“Yeah… maybe I shed a few tears.”

Finishing 108th, more than fifteen minutes behind Wout van Aert, it was not the result he had hoped for, but he still leaves with a wealth of experience.

“It was a good day in hell,” Kessler said.

And, like most riders who make it through Roubaix for the first time, he sounds less like someone who has completed a race and more like someone who has just begun to understand it.