Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes à Sars-et-Rosières
Cobbled sector · Roubaix
Checked
part of: The pavé of Paris–Roubaix
Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes à Sars-et-Rosières is a 2.3 km cobbled sector in Roubaix, essentially level (+2 m over its full length). It is cobbled throughout.
Four stars from the organiser, five from the French writers who ride every sector each spring. The 2025 race turned on it: Pedersen punctured here while Pogačar went across to Van der Poel with seventy kilometres still to ride. In the route since 1980.
2.3 km · level · +2 m · 2.3 km cobbled
Route and surface read from OpenStreetMap, elevation from satellite data — approximate.
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Elevation is drawn to the same scale on every segment, so a level sector looks level. The bands beneath the line are surface, not gradient.
History
Paris-Roubaix first used this road in 1980, and then only its opening 1,400 metres; the full 2,400 m has been ridden since 1983, and the last kilometre into Sars-et-Rosières was rebuilt in 1996. The 2025 race turned on it: Mads Pedersen punctured here and fell out of contention while Tadej Pogačar accelerated away to join Mathieu van der Poel at the front, with more than seventy kilometres still to ride. In 2026 Pogačar punctured on the sector before, Warlaing to Brillon, and got back to the head of the race at this one's exit. The women's race uses it as an attacking point too: Ellen van Dijk went clear early on it in 2025, the edition in which Cat Ferguson's ride ended here after a spectator stepped into her. The Tour de France has borrowed it twice in the other direction, Sars-et-Rosières to Tilloy, as the sixth of nine sectors on stage 5 in 2014 and again on stage 5 in 2022, when it was reckoned one of the two hardest sectors of the day, 20 km from Arenberg. Rated four stars today as sector 15, it keeps its stones because the Département du Nord relays them with Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix: in the cancelled 2020 season, between 14 September and 14 October, the specialist firm TPRN took apart and rebuilt two badly worn stretches including the sector's big bend, 360 m² in all, resetting most of the original cobbles in place.
What it’s like to ride
Sector 15 is two and a third kilometres of genuinely bad stone, holes everywhere and no regularity to any of it, which is why the French writers who ride every sector each spring give it five stars where the organiser gives four. Everything here is decided by whether you can hold the crown: a strong rider who stays on top of the pavé will think five stars generous, while a rider who slides down into the gutter suffers more than on Mons-en-Pévèle or the closing part of the Carrefour de l'Arbre. Holding it is the problem, because the crown carries grass in places and the road is full of small curves plus four real bends, the sharpest of them close to square, and those corners have caught out favourites. It is flat, under two metres of height change end to end across open farmland, so nothing you lose here is gravity, only the stones and then the wind, which arrives properly on the long exposed straight after the exit, itself reached through a corner tighter than a right angle. Tractors use this road, so it can be muddy even when the rest of the course is dry, and although Les Amis de Paris-Roubaix have levelled some of the biggest craters it is still rough in patches rather than repaired. You can ride it any day: it is an ordinary public lane, sector 15 of the Paris-Roubaix Challenge, reached off the Warlaing to Brillon pavé by about a kilometre of asphalt with two right-angle turns.
Surface and what to expect
Cobbled throughout.
- Cobbleskm 0.0–2.3
More to ride in Roubaix
Common questions
- How long is Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes à Sars-et-Rosières?
- Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes à Sars-et-Rosières is a 2.3 km cobbled sector in Roubaix, essentially level (+2 m over its full length). It is cobbled throughout.
- What is the surface like on Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes à Sars-et-Rosières?
- Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes à Sars-et-Rosières is cobbled throughout, measured from OpenStreetMap surface tags along the route.
- Is Tilloy-lez-Marchiennes à Sars-et-Rosières flat?
- Effectively, yes. It gains 2 m across 2.3 km — an average of 0.0%.