Lewis Askey and his heroic Roubaix: 155km with a gash in the leg

His name is Lewis Askey, a 20-year-old British guy. He lives in Cannock, north of Birmingham, halfway between London and Liverpool. Growing up in the Continental team of the Groupama-Fdj, he was included in the first team this season alongside Demare, Pinot, Kung, Guarnieri. The first Paris-Roubaix took place on Sunday. He knows the stones well: in 2018, as a junior, he won it, beating the blue Samuele Manfredi in the sprint. Yes, Samuele, who like Askey was part of the Continental group of the French team: the Ligurian was an absolute talent, but on 10 December of that year he had a very serious road accident on his roads from which he is slowly recovering.

The bandage Let’s go back to Askey and his first pro Roubaix. Eleven minutes have passed since the triumph of Dutch Van Baarle. The 20-year-old Englishman arrives at the velodrome with a bandage on his left knee and his whole leg bathed in blood. A drink to wet your lips again, then get back on your bike, destination the famous stone showers of Roubaix. Here awaits the doctor. Lewis holds his leg as if he were a war wounded, waiting for the stretcher bearers. And he tells his colleagues at Rouleur magazine about his adventure, which began in the first real challenging sector of pavé, the fourth of the 30 scheduled: Saint Python. “Wet pavement, water or a bottle must have fallen on the ground, and the rider in front of me did the worst thing that could be done: braking on the cobblestones. And then wheels that cross, all skidding and one on top of the other. It happened early in the industry and no one could move. I tried to stay up but then they hit me from behind because no one could stop, and they hit me even when I was on the ground “.

The force Askey gets up, but sees that his left knee is bleeding: “I could see well inside my leg, I could see deep inside. The cut was clean ”. This is why he believes that the injury came from the disc brake of a racer who then hit him. “I went to the doctor’s car and asked him for a tight bandage around the knee to prevent blood from escaping and to protect it from dust.” Askey had a job to do: protect her own Captain Stefan Kung. “I rode it I think really well in the Arenberg Forest, I was worried that Kung was in the best possible position. I was running and I felt the adrenaline inside ”.

The end The race continues and no one pays any attention to Lewis Askey, who continues to pedal with the aim of arriving at the Roubaix velodrome. “The last hour and a half has been really tough. The best thing to do would have been to stop immediately, but it would have meant still inflicting too much pain on me, oh, don’t finish the Roubaix. If that makes sense “. It makes sense, yes, because runners are not just any people: they are heroes, they have a level of tolerance for pain and fatigue that crosses all boundaries. Then maybe they realize it later, but the instinct to get on that white line, to finish the job for which they are paid is stronger than everything.

Thoughts Askey arrives in Roubaix after cycling for 155 kilometers, of which almost 50 on cobblestones, with a bleeding knee. He arrives 42nd, his captain Kung is already on the podium, third. And thinks back to the sacrifices of his family to make him run, to his brother Ben, 18, also a racer, to the profession he interprets at the highest level. At the hospital he is diagnosed with a severe tear around his left knee, which thankfully did not touch the muscle. No surgery, just a few weeks off the bike. “In the end I think we are super lucky to do the work we do.”
Lewis Askey cycled through Hell. She went through it, and he won. In the end, he too found, on a hot April afternoon, at Easter, his reason for living: to be a professional runner.