Paris-Roubaix is a special race for everyone. The audience, the cyclists, but also the soigneurs. Team LottoNL-Jumbo’s soigneur Antoine de Jaeger makes sure the cyclists are as comfortable as possible.

“I try to take care of them and massage them as good as possible. You can tell that they’re very tensed. I can tell, amongst other things, by the way they keep pacing up and down. They’re also a lot more quiet when they’re on my table, they know what awaits them, and that’s a lot. Luckily, they’re extremely busy and cannot spend too much time thinking about all the cobbles.

“Before the race, I’m mostly busy with setting up a schedule to make sure we have staff with tires and water bottles in the right places during the race. They will be at 35 different places this edition of Paris-Roubaix. To coordinate those 35 places, I need to know how many team cars are available, once I know this, I approach staff and old colleagues, who are willing to help. It can be a tough job, but I have over 25 years of experience. It’s an extremely difficult puzzle, but we manage each year. In total we'll bring 14 team cars.

“The places where there are loads of crowds are the most difficult places to be. The forest of Wallers being the peak. Luckily, everyone has a lot of experience in helping the riders during the race, and I trust them all. To help them a bit, I give them a printed out card with all the places they need to be.

“In total, the team brings about 125 tires, half of them front tires, half of them back tires. Though we don’t want to use them all, it’s hard to predict how many flats will occur during a race. Next to that enormous amount of tires, we prepare about 300 water bottles. We have to assist the boys as well as possible during the race.”