There can only be one subject for today’s Lowdown: The Hell that is Paris-Roubaix. Lee has a look at the winning philosophy of race winner John Degenkolb and his do-or-die approach to the cobbled Classic. Sagan and Wiggins also come under the microscope; good and bad, but the beauty of L’enfer du Nord is the winner.Hed just about managed to fight off the tidal wave of emotion threatening to consume him after winning the biggest one-day race in the professional road cycling calendar and emulating his hero Sean Kelly, and then John Degenkolb said something that defined every second of the effort hed just wrought from his body: I was not afraid to fail and that was the key.Thats some deepness right there. I knew the lad could sprint but I never knew he was a philosopher. What he was talking about is something that marks the true champions from the also-rans, the seizing of the moment when the odds seemed stacked against you, the taking of the bull by the horns and controlling your own destiny. Failure must be embraced if one is ever to scale the heights. Its pivotal to success.In the modern era of cycling, of race radios and controlling trains, of meticulously some would say robotically prepared teams, to see a guy go all carpe diem was liberating. His surge from the chasers up to Greg Van Avermaet and Yves Lampaert was shocking not that he got there, but that he went in the first place....
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