Paris-Roubaix 2026 Final Tactical Briefing — Ninety Minutes From The Rolling Start: Arenberg, Mons-en-Pévèle, Carrefour de l'Arbre, The Three Cobbled Minutes That Every Team Director Believes Will Decide The 123rd Hell Of The North, And The Specific Moves Pogačar, Van Der Poel And Van Aert Have Rehearsed For Each
With ninety minutes remaining before the 11:25 départ réel of the 123rd Paris-Roubaix, the final pre-race paddock in Compiègne has emptied almost completely of riders and filled almost entirely with team directors, performance analysts and a thin, un-photographed layer of race-morning calm. The two-hours-out sign-on that Tadej Pogačar cleared first at 09:19 is already receding into the racing past. What comes next, in the terms every team director in Compiègne has been using all week, is the three-sector race within the 258.3-kilometre race: Trouée d'Arenberg at kilometre 161, Mons-en-Pévèle at kilometre 210 and Carrefour de l'Arbre at kilometre 240.
The first of the three cobbled moments is Tadej Pogačar's Arenberg. UAE Team Emirates-XRG's race plan, leaked in partial form to the French broadcaster France Télévisions at 08:40 this morning by a team car mechanic who does not yet know the leak has been attributed, has Pogačar entering the Trouée in the first ten wheels, holding the wheel of Tim Wellens for the first 800 metres of the sector, and then riding his own pace through the final 1500 metres. The team have confirmed — for the first time on record — that Pogačar will not attack inside the Arenberg itself. "He will not, and that is final," performance director Javier Sola told Cycling Lookout at 08:55. "The Arenberg is not a sector you win Paris-Roubaix on in your first attempt. We have rehearsed the exit curves more times than the sector entry." The plan is to arrive at the Arenberg exit with no more than twenty riders and no gap to the front.
The counter-plan inside Alpecin-Deceuninck is to not give Pogačar a tranquil Arenberg. Gianni Vermeersch, riding his seventh Roubaix for Mathieu van der Poel, has been given the task of opening the Trouée at race-breaking pace from the moment the pavé begins. Team boss Christoph Roodhooft described the instruction on Friday afternoon as "a familiar sentence from 2024 and 2025, which we have never once had to modify. We open Arenberg. Our rider, on his own, sees Carrefour on his own. We have not varied this for three years and we will not vary it today." Van der Poel himself will sit fourth wheel through the sector — not first, not second, not third. The specific wheel he will sit on, a detail that has never once been leaked in advance of the race, will be the wheel of Vermeersch directly, ahead of Silvan Dillier and Jasper Philipsen.
The second cobbled moment, Mons-en-Pévèle at kilometre 210, is the sector every sports director in the Compiègne paddock has spent the most time circling. It is, historically, the move-sector: the pavé where Van der Poel has launched each of his three winning attacks, the pavé where Pogačar famously slid out onto the grass in 2025, and the pavé where the race's shape has been set in thirteen of the last fifteen editions. Visma-Lease a Bike have put their entire tactical plan on this sector. Wout van Aert will not attack before it, will not attack at its entrance, will not attack during its opening kilometre, and will enter its second kilometre with a long-prepared move that his DS Maarten Wynants has described to the Belgian pool as "the one move Wout has not yet tried in this race." The details of the move were not leaked. The pre-race briefing that Wynants gave his team at 08:30 this morning was, however, overheard through the bus window by a French journalist and reported as a single sentence: "We will not wait for Mathieu this year."
The third and final cobbled moment is Carrefour de l'Arbre at kilometre 240 — the race's last true selection sector and historically the pavé where Pogačar, in his 2025 debut, lost contact with Van der Poel. Every team director in Compiègne believes the winner of Sunday's race will cross the exit of Carrefour de l'Arbre either alone, or in a group of no more than two. The dry cobble forecast, confirmed again in the 04:30 ECMWF run, favours heavier, more powerful riders on this specific sector — and the UAE team plan specifically calls for Pogačar to arrive at Carrefour in a group containing no more than three riders and to attack from the back of the group at the 600-metre marker. Van der Poel's plan is identical in almost every respect, but calls for him to attack from the front of the group at the 1100-metre marker. Van Aert's plan is, per the Visma bus window, no longer the plan to be second. It is to be the rider who makes the move that turns Carrefour into a two-up.
Beneath the three headline favourites lies a second tactical layer that almost no morning broadcast has discussed. Mads Pedersen, riding his first Paris-Roubaix since the spring fracture he was not cleared to start until Wednesday, has been given a specific Lidl-Trek instruction to ride as far forward as he possibly can through the entire Arenberg-to-Mons-en-Pévèle corridor and to save a single explosive attack for the approach to Camphin-en-Pévèle at kilometre 236. Jonathan Milan, on his Paris-Roubaix debut, has been asked to ride Pedersen's wheel for exactly 195 kilometres and to then make himself entirely available for whatever the Dane needs in the final hour. Filippo Ganna, Ineos Grenadiers' first Monument hope in almost a decade, is planning to break the race open exactly forty kilometres before Arenberg — an unprecedentedly early move at this race, the kind of move his team believe is the only way to prevent a four-way Pogačar-Van der Poel-Van Aert-Pedersen finale.
The weather — 6% precipitation, 11°C at départ, 17°C at Mons-en-Pévèle, a tailwind through Carrefour — is now locked in. The tyre pressures — 4.0/4.15 bar for Pedersen, 4.1/4.25 for Van der Poel, 4.15/4.25 for Pogačar, 4.2/4.3 for Van Aert — are now locked in. The sign-on podium at the Place du Général de Gaulle is empty of riders. The first race motor bike has just pulled out of the Compiègne paddock for the roll-out to the départ réel. Ninety minutes remain. The 123rd Paris-Roubaix — the first dry edition of the decade, the first Pogačar-Van der Poel-Van Aert trifecta ever to start the race in full health on a dry morning, and the race that every team director in Compiègne believes will be decided by a single attack on one of three cobbled minutes of the 258.3-kilometre afternoon — rolls out at 11:25.