Ganna's Roubaix Gamble — Skip Flanders, Chase a First Monument
While the rest of the Classics peloton spent Easter Sunday being dismantled by Tadej Pogačar on the Oude Kwaremont, Filippo Ganna was at home in Piedmont, finishing a three-hour endurance ride before sitting down to the kind of lunch most Italians reserve for Christmas. That was the plan all along. Skip the Tour of Flanders. Protect the legs. Hit Paris-Roubaix on the best day of his life.
Ganna's 2026 spring has been a study in ruthless prioritisation. The Ineos Grenadiers time-trial specialist turned Classics project has been quietly rewriting his calendar for two winters, trimming away the weeks of stage racing that used to break up his cobbled build-up and replacing them with deeper, longer endurance blocks. The result has been visible at every start line so far: a more resilient, more patient rider who can now go deep into a 240km Classic without haemorrhaging time in the final hour.
The biggest indicator came on Wednesday at Dwars door Vlaanderen, where Ganna won his first Classic of any description after surviving a broken wheel, a snapped handlebar and two bike changes — then riding down Wout van Aert inside the final kilometre. It was the kind of performance, gritty and implausible in equal measure, that makes rivals start recalculating.
"He needs to call my girlfriend, because she's preparing a fantastic dinner for Easter," Ganna joked at the finish in Waregem when asked whether Dwars had changed his mind about riding Flanders. "My next race is not the Ronde. My next race is Roubaix. That has not changed for one second."
On paper the call looks obvious. Ganna has finished on the Roubaix podium in each of the last two editions and held the race velodrome lap record until Mathieu van der Poel lowered it in 2025. The flat, cobbled, power-first nature of Paris-Roubaix suits him in a way that the climbs of the Ronde simply never will. And this year, for perhaps the first time, he arrives at the Hell of the North with a Classic already on his 2026 palmarès and the confidence that comes with it.
The tactical picture in the Ineos camp has also shifted. With Tom Pidcock still managing the aftermath of his Volta a Catalunya crash and focussed on the Ardennes, Ganna is now the undisputed team leader at Roubaix. Expect a squad built entirely around him, with Josh Tarling and Magnus Sheffield working as cobble-specific engines in the long run-in to the Arenberg Forest, and Ben Turner holding the front of the bunch through the critical first sectors.
Rivals are taking note. Van der Poel, chasing a record fourth consecutive Roubaix win, has already name-checked Ganna as "probably my biggest concern — more than Pogačar, because Filippo knows exactly how to race this one." That is a loaded compliment from the defending champion, and one Ganna himself has refused to return. "Mathieu is the king of Roubaix," he said on Sunday. "You do not take the crown off the king. You try to beat him on the day. That is it."
If the stars align next Sunday — dry weather, a clean first hour, the legs he showed at Dwars — there is a genuine case that Ganna could finally convert a decade of Classics apprenticeship into a first Monument. If they don't, he will have skipped Flanders for nothing, and the Italian critics will not be quiet about it. Either way, Easter lunch is likely to be the last comfortable meal of his week.