INSIDE HELL
Knees bloodied, body bruised, face splattered in mud, but Lizzy Bennett is still smiling. The Welshwoman hasn’t won, in fact she hasn’t even made the time cut at the first ever women’s edition of Paris-Roubaix but if there’s anyone that seems to sum up the mood on this sodden afternoon in northern France it’s her.
“I’m good now, maybe not so much a couple of hours ago,” she says, laughing and still wiping the mud off her face. “I was in the front group and maybe on the third secteur in I crashed and I’m not saying my day was over from there but I was on the back foot. I ended up crashing three times. It was a mudbath on most secteurs to be honest, each time I just lost the front wheel and went down.
She adds: “I’ve scratched up both my knees and my elbows as well. Looking back now it was a pretty surreal experience, during the race I felt good but because it was wet it was just pot luck if you stayed up.”
We wonder if she thought about quitting, and there’s no hesitation in her answer: “No. It’s just such a historic race, it’s just so cool to say you’ve done
