There is a fine line between stupidity and dedication ”, a line that Mathew Hayman knows he has to dance on to achieve the most extraordinary feat of his life. The words of the Australian rider on his official Twitter profile are the description of a photo that sees him pedaling on the rollers with his right arm in a plaster cast. It is March 2016, the Australian crashed with a fractured elbow at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad , the race that opens the cobblestone classics season in Belgium. A thud that hurts especially morale, his team, Orica GreenEDGE (the current Mitchelton-Scott), tells him to take it easy, recover and get back available for the Tour de France .

He translated goodbye classics from the north and especially Paris-Roubaix, his favorite race, the one in which he had participated for the first time on April 9, 2000, when he was only 22 years old. He was already a finished runner, head on his shoulders, 190 centimeters of concreteness and reliability, the ideal teammate. For this he has become an exceptional wingman. A man of enormous size, but with an even bigger heart. He has never won so many races, but on the damned stones of the Roubaix he has always had his say, with humility and determination. No, Hayman really doesn't want to miss the “Queen of the classics”, also because she is now 38 years old and her career is at the end. Two days after the fall he starts pedaling again and on 10 April 2016 he is there at the start, for the sixteenth time in his life: it is already a feat. The Aussie may not be in the best of form, there have been other times when he has had the leg to amaze, but he never has. That day he would be content with a dignified ride. Instead, fate has different plans, Hayman finds himself in the leading group 114 kilometers from the finish, even before the terrible stretch of the Arenberg Forest . With him there are also the eternal promise Yaroslav Popovich and the Sicilian Salvatore Puccio , but above all a big caliber like Tom Boonen. The Belgian has already triumphed four times, just like “Monsieur Roubaix” Roger De Vlaeminck , winning would go to five, and would remain unattainable for many years. On the Carrefour de l'Arbre , Sep Vanmarcke remains alone and seems to have placed the right extension. Not so, the British Ian Stannard is a train and goes to take it back. In the lead remain in five, Vanmarcke, Stannard, Boasson Hagen , Boonen and Mathew Hayman . They are the first to enter the Roubaix velodrome. Everyone's eyes are on Tom Boonen, Belgium is waiting for the victory that would project him into the legend, but the energies in that mythical concrete ring are few for everyone. Hayman, surprisingly, has more and wins by mocking “Tornado Tom”.

An extraordinary feat, the Australian does not believe in it and achieves it only when he is to lift the Paris-Roubaix trophy. A piece of stone, all that effort to lift a piece of stone, seems madness, but in that block of cobblestones there is the essence of cycling and a great, huge story, like the heart of Mathew Hayman.

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