The dance after the stones by Alison Jackson, the nightmare of Paris-Roubaix exorcised with a smile

Cherchez la femme. And you will find, or rather you will chase, the story. Not only the classic one, but also the bizarre one of the cyclist Alison. Mesdames, but also messieurs, it’s time for Roubaix. There is a road in the woods: stones, cobblestones, cobblestones. Ask the dust when it’s sunny and the mud when it rains. Wheels are almost never sacred, it is easier for them to be cursed. No Douce France. Roubaix is ​​Pain, pedaling and sliding on bumps. Then (right) rhetoric has fun changing adjectives. Whoever founded it in 1896 spoke of a “diabolical project” and asked for forgiveness, the Frenchman Bernard Hinault defined it as “rubbish” after winning it in ’81, the Belgian Eddy Merckx won it three times in ’68, ’70, ‘ 73, but he had no problem revealing the fear of the runners who returned to the hotel with their backs in pieces and their hands shaking “like those of old people”.

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To do less harm, there are those who invite you to read the stones of the path, those who listen to the sound of the bicycles rolling over them, “their jingle recalls certain turns of Argentine tango”, even if with carbon fiber the noise does not it’s more that, and whoever put those cobblestones at the centerpiece like the Belgian Johan Museeuw who won three races in the hell of the north and left one knee there in ’98. The sacrifice is served, take a seat. You will have understood: Roubaix cuts, almost always wounds, but sometimes heals. It saves you from psychoanalysis, not collateral damage, but at least you come away knowing who you are. And then there is Alison Jackson, 35 years old, Canadian, a cyclist almost by chance, with a long braid of brown hair who wins it in 2023 and starts dancing to I wanna rock. And so she erases all that karst, trench, battlefield atmosphere. Don’t think, just do. Don’t think, do. It’s the one she glued onto the handlebars with two small blue strips of tape that physiotherapists use, a quote from Top Gun Maverick. And maybe it wouldn’t be bad to put the writing on the windshield of our lives every now and then. «Bisons, dance and bikes», were the headlines in the newspapers. To explain that Alison, who lived among prairies and forests, only the Red Coats were missing, she wasn’t really a believer, and had little to do with the religion of cycling. Roots, roots, non-existent. And her pedaling too was firm, but not too elegant, like a peasant. Because up there in Vermilion, east of Edmonton, near the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan, in western Canada, the priorities and entertainment are different. There are more than 7 thousand kilometers away from Roubaix, including the Atlantic Ocean. It’s unlikely that Alison’s gaze could reach there and instead the curves of the earth are slides that make you end up on the other side. How many times have we thought that we are not part of the environment, that we are highly inhomogeneous? Alison grew up on a farm with cattle and fields of wheat, corn and rapeseed, without Van Gogh’s sunflowers that make such a cycling postcard. Nothing bucolic, not even the photos of her, always in front of a tractor. «I always wanted to be a country woman, when dad took my brother around the farm to work, I was there to say: let me do it».

Lots of outdoor life, outdoor energy, but never a crank, also because the prairie there is uninhabited and it’s fine if you have a friend or a bar within 200 kilometres. «I never rode a bike as a child, when I finished high school I wanted to become a professional dancer, also because I studied dance with Miss Ryan who I loved very much». After an expedition to the Himalayas and a year-long program at Columbia Bible College, she returned home to find that a laborer her father hired had left an old, rusty bicycle in the barn. She got on her bike and realized it was a faster way to get around than walking or running. She was 18 years old. A friend of hers told her about triathlon and it was then that she began to understand that she was predisposed for the sport. While working as an intern at Columbia, she looked for a club to train in swimming, cycling and running. The coach also looked after the newly formed cycling team at Trinity Western University in Vancouver, Alison went with them to a race in Whistler and won it. They offered her an athletics scholarship, in 2014 she participated in the university cross country world championships in Uganda. She then borrowed a newer bike from her coach, she was hit while she was going to get assistance in a retirement home, with the insurance money she replaced the destroyed one and used the remaining funds to buy a new one. She was twenty years old.

At 34 she won the Roubaix, her first major title, which she will defend today in the fourth edition of the race. To return to those who always feel like they’re in the wrong picture: Alison Jackson won the stone race after spending her life collecting them in the fields of her farm. They didn’t bother the bison, but her father’s agricultural vehicles. And you talked about gamify, demystifying the ethics of effort, hard things are fun, the sport of crossing climbs lightly, even with your tongue hanging out. «Children are the only people who can compete with my energy, sometimes I compete with them to see who sits first and I win». She is missing the phrase that has always inspired her. It’s from Miss Ryan, her dance teacher. “It’s never too late to become an expert in something.”