The 2022 Tour de France has been a relative breeze for most of the riders so far, bar a couple of minor crashes towards the end of the sprint stages. There’s been Geraint Thomas’s unwanted gilet and Jasper Philipsen’s mistaken celebration, but most of the tribulations have been minor compared to what may be in store on stage 5, as the peloton takes on 11 cobblestone sectors which tend to bring no shortage of drama.
The route is a 157km ride from Lille to Arenberg Port du Hainaut in the north of France. An intermediate sprint early in the piece should bring the sprinters to the fore as they chase points for the green jersey, before the cobbles – or pavé – begin. The same cobblestones which cause such chaos in Paris-Roubaix (dubbed ‘Hell of the North’ for good reason) could well claim abandonments as the riders travel through narrow uneven tracks at high speed. Most of the sectors are around 1.3km long and take around 2 minutes to complete, and the main overall contenders will make it their mission to avoid trouble.
Mathieu van der Poel is the bookies’ favourite today and with good reason, having twice won the cobbled Tour of Flanders. The man in the yellow jersey, Wout van Aert, won sensationally on stage 4 in Calais and will be a contender again here having won cobbled classics like Gent-Wevelgem, while Dylan van Baarle (Ineos), Mads Pedersen (Trek–Segafredo), Peter Sagan (TotalEnergies) and Kasper Asgreen (Quick-Step) all have cobble wins on their palmarès.
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