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2003 Paris-Roubaix
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DVD: 240 mins
BVE 0210
DVD Region: 0 (works wordwide)
By all accounts, Peter Van Petegem has 20-20 vision, but the 37-year old veteran from Brakel, Belgium was seeing double! Just days after winning the Tour of Flanders, the Lotto-Domo rider took a high-speed exciting three-up sprint finish to win an uncharacteristically dry and almost unbearably dusty "Hell of the North". It was a hard-fought race.
In fact, Peter The Great was so far back during the first two hours of the event that he, with the good fortune of the tortoise versus the hare, missed the first big pile-up near Troisvilles. "Four of my team-mates brought me back up to the front no problem." Another pile-up sent Frank Vandenbroucke home, and the first decisive sector, the Arenberg Forest at 166 kilometres, had the usual effect of reducing the gap between the 14 ahead and a rapidly shredding peloton behind to less than two minutes, with a very surprised Acosta (ibanesto.com) in the lead. It didn't last long. Andrea Tafi (CSC) accelerated again and again while former Belgian national champion, Ludovic Capelle, took the lead just after Arenberg as dust and dreams swirled in the wind. New leaders were as numerous as cobbles. At last, pounding down the tree-lined avenues towards the velodrome it was a three-way race between Peter Van Petegem, 38-year old Russian Postal rider Vjatcheslaav Ekimov, and Dario Pieri (Saeco).
As they came around the circuit for the second time, it was a question of now or never. Ekimov tried his best, with a plunge off the boards, but as soon as he made his move, Van Petegem accelerated while Pieri, unable to get on his wheel, floundered behind. Urged on by hundreds of Flandrians that had packed the velodrome, Peter the Great raced across the finish and within the space of a few short days, saw victory again!
Commentary by Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen
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