'It's not a pure lottery' – the story of Paris-Roubaix's unlikeliest winner, a decade on

Mathew Hayman had just finished giving a TV interview, his skin dry with dirt, when he saw his team-mate Luke Durbridge marching towards him across the grass in the centre of the Roubaix Velodrome. Having reached the line almost five minutes down, Durbridge didn’t know who had won. But he could see it in Hayman’s eyes – a cocktail of shock, disbelief and joy.

Hayman, joints stiffening, pushed himself up out of a folding wooden chair. “This doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen,” he muttered, as Durbridge pulled him in for a back-slapping hug. Durbridge then grabbed Hayman two-handed by the cheeks, and inches from his face, shouted back: “It does to you!”

Mathew Hayman was never meant to win Paris-Roubaix in 2016. The Australian had started the race 14 times previously, and never finished near the podium. What's more, an arm break at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, suffered six weeks before, was supposed to have laid waste to his Classics campaign – he was confined to training on a turbo in his garage twice a day. Orica-BikeExchange had chosen Jens Keukeleire as their leader for the testing, cobbled Monument. Then, 10 days shy of his 38th birthday, and on the 15th time of trying, Hayman shocked the cycling world, and himself.

“[Paris-Roubaix] rewards guys that don’t normally, you know…” Hayman begins. Win? “I think the podiums at [the Tour of] Flanders are a bit more consistent, or Milan-San Remo, but when you go and look through Roubaix, I’m not going to say it’s a lottery, but there are guys that get their day that otherwise wouldn’t. There’s a whole bunch of riders that live off that little bit of hope that it could be them.”

Now a sports director at Jayco AlUla, Hayman’s name holds special status in Roubaix legend. His victory in 2016, the 10th anniversary of which is celebrated this year, is often touted as the most unlikely in the race’s 130-year history. It came as the fruit of a career’s worth of experience and persistence, having been struck down so many times by twists of ill fate. Hayman and Roubaix was the love story that seemed destined against a fairytale ending. So he had to go and write it himself.

“Early on in my career, I remember some of the mechanics and soigneurs at Rabobank saying, ‘Oh this race will suit you’,” the now 47-year-old remembers. “But I can tell you, the first couple of years, I wasn’t sure. I copped a few hidings. And I was really scratching my head saying, ‘Is this even a race for me?’”

Sixty-fifth on debut in 2000, 49th the following year, and outside the time limit in 2002, Hayman and the cobbles of northern France got off to a rocky start. Come 2008, and things still weren’t much better; on his seventh attempt, Hayman finished alone at the back of the race, 10 minutes behind the next best rider.

“The only thing I remember is, by 10 minutes after the last group, people are starting to walk across the road – they’re all going home,” he says.

“A lady stepped out in front of me and I cleaned her up. She went flying, I went flying. I was rather annoyed. I was pretty frustrated at this point, I was just wanting to get to the finish line and was just riding out the frustration that I didn’t even get a chance to race really. Yeah, I think I gave her a bit of a dressing down.”

Familiarity with Roubaix’s cruel sectors, however, tots up, and Hayman’s fortunes soon began to change. Top 10s in 2011 and 2012 cemented him as a seasoned Roubaix veteran, but left him wondering: what would it take to race for the win? His teams, first Rabobank and then Sky, didn’t see him as an outright leader. And he wasn’t getting any younger. He knew he would have to do it himself, and so, in 2016, then in his third season with Orica and into the twilight of his career, he got in the breakaway.

“I guess that’s what went right,” he says. “And having those years of experience. I was looking the other day, and when you look at the oldest winners of Monuments, I think the top 10 or 15 oldest winners are all Roubaix winners. It is a race that suits the older, hardened guy with a bit of experience.”

Spotting a promising move, Hayman slipped away with the escapees after only a few hours of racing that mid-April morning. His arm was sore, his broken radius barely mended, so he tried to hold back his energy in the group. “I felt like the wheels could fall off at any point, so I raced pretty conservatively all the way to the line,” he says, “whereas a couple of other times I felt like I had to pre-empt or force a move.”

The 2016 edition counted 27 cobbled sectors between Compiègne and Roubaix. Hayman’s past wisdom carried him through each of them unscathed. “It’s just knowing what’s coming up,” he says, but he was careful to avoid complacency, too. “There’s sometimes an element of having too much knowledge,” he continues. “I go into some sectors and I’m like, ‘You can crash on this corner. Guys puncture over there.’ You can also be a little too hesitant.”

By the time the race reached the outskirts of Roubaix, the front group had whittled down to five riders. Hayman, keen to rid himself of four-time winner Tom Boonen, made his first dig inside 5km to go, among a slew of punchy attacks exchanged between the leaders. Boonen then gained a gap, which Hayman bridged, before attacking himself over the top with 2km remaining.

For the first time in 15 editions, Hayman entered the velodrome riding for the win. The mood suddenly felt different. “Well,” he says, “I wasn’t exactly just soaking up the atmosphere.”

The Belgian faithful had made the short journey across the border to cheer for Boonen. If the Etixx-Quick Step rider won, he would break the record for victories in the Monument, surpassing Roger De Vlaeminck. The finale looked to be heading in his favour, too, when Hayman opened up his sprint round the final bend, towing Boonen in his slipstream. But neither he, nor the three chasers, came past. Hayman stretched his tall frame up in the saddle, and, mouth agape, drew his almost two-metre wingspan out wide.

Later, he would apologise to the Belgian press for spoiling their Boonen headlines. “I hope you guys are happy with me winning and that Tom didn’t,” Hayman told the media. “I’m sorry about that. I’m sure that Tom’s going to have some sleepless nights about it and I’m sorry, but I won.” The last two are words he had only said before in his dreams.

Today, the Australian is part of an exclusive group of riders who have placed at either extreme of Paris-Roubaix, finishing both first and last. (The 2022 champion, Dylan van Baarle, also lays claim to the same feat). Hayman's record, from 113th in 2008 to 1st in 2016, seems testament to the unpredictability of cycling’s most feared Monument. “You say unpredictable,” he chimes in, “but go and click on Tom Boonen’s results – I think he was either on the podium or top 10 every single time. It’s not a pure lottery. It might be more so for myself and some others.

“People often ask me how hard Roubaix is. And look, Roubaix is a really hard race, it’s physically and mentally demanding, but it’s what you’re expecting going in there. Everything is leading to that. You’ve spent the last three days getting into that mindset, ready to hurt yourself, which is often a lot easier than some other race where you go in expecting it to be pretty straightforward.”

Every time Hayman lined up for Roubaix, he did so with one line of advice in mind. It came courtesy of his Rabobank team-mate Marc Wauters: always keep riding – you never know what’s going to happen.

“I started 17 Roubaixs and I finished all of them,” Hayman says. There were times when the finish line couldn’t come sooner, and others when he wanted to savour every second. But that victory in 2016, a result as much surprising as deserved, will also be his fondest memory.

The quotes in this article are from an interview that took place in 2023, when Mathew Hayman contributed to a Cycling Weekly magazine feature about riders who had finished last at Paris-Roubaix.