And then you get someone like Mat Hayman who comes along and wins Paris-Roubaix on a bog standard aero road bike and everyone goes “hmm, all this “special one off bike for P-R” is actually a pile of rubbish.
You’d have thought that Sky / Pinarello might have learned their lesson about this by now, constantly banging on about marginal gains and then failing to win it.
This year: Gianni Moscon got 5th (out of 5 in the breakaway sprint…) but the next Sky rider was at 59th.
2016, they did a bit better with Ian Stannard in 3rd and Luke Rowe at 14th but even so, for all the hype about their suspension bike being super tech and custom made for cobbles, it must be a bit disheartening to see the race won on nothing more than a normal bike with slightly wider tyres.
Also, I wish Pinarello would come up with a name other than Dogma for their bikes.