Last year at this time, Alison Jackson had yet to win a race across 18 months. The Canadian veteran grabbed hold of opportunity just 15km from the start of the third edition of Paris-Roubaix Femmes avec Zwift when she escaped among an early breakaway group. She then sprinted ahead of six others to claim a career-defining victory at the Roubaix velodrome.
“For me, it was going to have a lot of meaning to win a Monument and also to write my name in the history book as the first Canadian, male or female, to have won any of the Monuments. Yeah, that itself I am really proud of,” Jackson told Cyclingnews before she began racing the spring Classics this season with her new team, EF Education-Cannondale.
The victory has gone beyond the pages of a history book, spilling over to international recognition and social media celebrity for the Canadian champion. She’s known for her storytelling expressed with video dance moves. Using a parody of a Twisted Sister rock song “I Wanna Rock”, changing ‘wanna’ to ‘won a’, Jackson’s Paris-Roubaix celebratory escapade with the iconic cobbled trophy cast her into a new sphere of stardom.
