The final lap bell had departed. Sure, the time limit had come almost half an hour before, the advertising in the famous Roubaix Velodrome was being packed up, and buses were beginning to depart, but it was the fact that the bell signifying one more lap - and the man operating it - had left which seemed like the greatest signifier that Paris-Roubaix was over.
Then, out of nowhere, whistles were blown to signify that one more rider was coming through. As the crowds departed, coming the other way was Joey Pidcock of Q36.5 Pro Cycling on his senior Paris-Roubaix debut, riding a full lap and a half of the velodrome to complete his race. He finished outside of the time limit, one of the scores of riders not to officially finish the race, but he achieved his goal of completing the Hell of the North.
Asked what it was like to finish the race alone, 53:40 behind Mathieu van der Poel, the winner, the 23-year-old replied bluntly: "About as fun as that sounds."
"I didn't come with the best shape but I had to finish," he explained. "It didn't matter how long it took. I thought it would be dark by the time I got here."
Pidcock spent almost half the race riding alone, he said in an empty velodrome.
"Before the cobbles, I almost got caught in three crashes in a row," he said when asked about when his race was over. "When [Wout] van Aert crashed he was so close to me, I think he touched me, when he came down. After that I wasn't risking my life for it, I already didn't have the legs."
"I might not get to ride it again, so of course I've got to finish," Pidcock said. "So many people don't get the opportunity to ride here, to ride something like this.
"People actually want to finish this one more than most races."
Despite his brutal day out on the cobbles, he was still trying to enjoy it, despite the many factors that would make a normal person stop and climb off.
"I was really excited for it before," Pidcock said. "I'm not here because of my legs, I'm here because guys crashed and weren't able to come. I was excited, I did it last year [the U23], it was really fun. There were some mechanical problems then.
"Arenberg was still pretty cool, proper walls of noise... There were still people [out there], but everyone was going home already."
Ultimately, he just knew he wanted to enter the velodrome, whatever it took. "I don't think it was that hard mentally to finish, I just committed to doing it," he said.
There aren't many races where people push themselves to the limit just to finish, but Paris-Roubaix is one, and Pidcock can now always say that he completed the Hell of the North.
