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Paris-Roubaix

Bahrain Victorious Confirm Paris-Roubaix Squad: Mohoric Leads, Bauhaus and Pasqualon Round Out an Experienced Cobbled Seven

CYCLING LOOKOUT • 8 APRIL 2026

Bahrain Victorious have completed the final piece of the cobbled team-selection puzzle, confirming their seven-man Paris-Roubaix line-up on Wednesday afternoon with Slovenian classics specialist Matej Mohoric handed undisputed leadership of a squad that has been forced to reinvent itself since the winter departure of Fred Wright. With Mohoric still hunting his first Monument and an experienced cobbled support cast around him, the Bahraini outfit will arrive in Compiègne carrying genuine — if quietly underrated — outsider ambitions.

Mohoric is joined by German sprinter Phil Bauhaus, Italian veteran Andrea Pasqualon, young Belgian climber-puncheur Vlad van Mechelen, Polish rouleur Kamil Gradek, Slovenian engine Matevž Govekar and 2024 Hell of the North surprise package Daniel Skerl. It is a line-up notably short on big-name firepower compared to the squads from UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Alpecin-Deceuninck, but every rider on the start sheet has at least one previous Roubaix finish to his name — a degree of cobbled experience that no other team in the peloton can match.

The most interesting selection is undoubtedly Van Mechelen, the 22-year-old Flemish prospect whose breakthrough Omloop Het Nieuwsblad top-ten in February established him as the next great Bahraini cobbled hope. He is younger and lighter than the rest of the squad and is being groomed by team management as the long-term successor to Mohoric for the cobbled programme. Sports director Tristan Hoffman confirmed that Van Mechelen would have a "free, attacking" role on Sunday — given license to launch from medium-distance whenever the front of the race begins to splinter.

"We have lost Fred but we have not lost our ambition," Hoffman told Het Nieuwsblad on Wednesday. "Matej is in the best classics shape we have seen him in for two years, Phil is sprinting as well as ever, and Vlad has emerged this spring as a rider we can build a generation around. We will not be the favourites on Sunday, but anybody who has watched our riders this March knows we will be in the front group when the race comes alive at Mons-en-Pévèle."

Mohoric's leadership represents a return to the rider's own roots in the cobbled classics. The Slovenian, who famously won Milan-San Remo in 2022 with a now-iconic dropper-post descent, has spent the last two seasons consciously rebuilding his classics calendar after a period focused on Grand Tour stages. His sixth-place finish at the Tour of Flanders on Sunday — his best result at a Monument since 2023 — suggested that his attempted late-career pivot back towards the pavé might just be working.

"Roubaix is the race I have always wanted to win the most," Mohoric said at Bahrain's pre-race press conference at the team hotel in Lille. "Sanremo I won by being smart. Roubaix you have to win by being strong, and at 31 I am finally as strong on the pavé as I was when I was 22. We will not be afraid on Sunday. The team is good, the bikes are good, and I have nothing left to prove anywhere except here."

Tactically, the Bahraini plan is widely expected to mirror the squad's old approach with Wright — keep Mohoric protected through the first two-thirds of the race, allow Van Mechelen and Skerl to follow early-distance attacks, then unleash Mohoric himself on the long, dragging cobbled sectors after Mons-en-Pévèle. With Bauhaus held in reserve as a Plan B in case of a small-group sprint into the velodrome — a scenario that has historically suited Bahrain's cobbled riders well — the team will not lack for tactical flexibility.

What Bahrain undeniably lack, however, is the raw star power of the teams above them on the betting boards. Unlike Pogacar, Van der Poel, Van Aert or Pedersen, Mohoric is not a rider expected to dictate the race himself. But on a course as savagely random as Roubaix — where punctures, crashes and tactical chaos can reshape the entire podium in the final 60 kilometres — Bahrain Victorious arriving with their full cobbled experience intact may yet be exactly the kind of dark-horse profile that suits a Hell of the North weekend in which everybody else is staring at Pogacar.

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