Yet their participation will be no less heroic. The winding, 260km route has 29 long sectors of old, narrow farm road covered in rough cobblestones, which frequently causes catastrophic accidents, especially in wet weather.
Connoisseurs of the race study the weather forecast ahead of time, hoping for miserable conditions and rain. A day out from this year's edition, the skies look to be dry but lingering mud and waterlogged cobbled sections guarantee another year of carnage.
Some think that is why Paris Roubaix is also known as "The Hell of the North".
The nickname is in fact a reference to the fact that the route threads through terrain that endured four years of shelling and trench warfare 100 years ago.
That is the amazing link between the young Kiwis going out to do battle on their bikes on Sunday and an earlier generation of their cycling forefathers who fought and died here.
The New Zealand Cycling Corps arrived on the Western Front in July 1916 and were attached in separate units to the British army. Around 60 died during the war, and many are buried in the British cemeteries at Marfaux and Messines, where they saw some of their heaviest fighting at the battle of Kemmelberg.
The Kemmelberg, a cobbled hill just over the French-Belgian border from Roubaix, is an iconic feature of last week's Gent-Wevelgem, which kicked off the week of cobbled racing which ends on Sunday.
It was Roger Dungan, newly installed Deputy Ambassador to the OECD at the New Zealand Embassy in Paris, who came across the obscured history of the cycling corps and initiated a programme of remembrance that came to its climax this year.
Dungan's first step, with the assistance of several local and New Zealand organisations was to retrieve one of the cobbles from the Kemmelberg – mounted on wood from a First World War trench – to create a perpetual trophy for the winner of the New Zealand U23 national road race.
Bauer, who assisted in the effort to create it, said the trophy was special.
"To think 100 years is not that long ago, but that there were guys like me travelling from as far away as New Zealand to fight over here, which says so much about New Zealanders," Bauer said.
James Fouche was the first winner of the mounted cobblestone under 23 national champion trophy in Napier in January.
Two wreath-laying ceremonies and a plaque unveiling were held in the past week at Messines and Marfaux, at which Dungan was accompanied by a NZ Defence attache from the embassy, a representative of Cycling NZ and a party of more than 30 cycle tourists from New Zealand including a nephew and grandchildren of members of the cycling corps.
On Saturday, the group will take part in the cyclosportif version of Paris Roubaix, riding a part of the route, to experience some of the confronting challenge of "The Hell of the North".
On Sunday, it's the turn of the professionals. All of the biggest names in the sport will be there, including world champion Peter Sagan and Nicki Terpstra, winner of last Sunday's other big race in the series, The Tour of Flanders.
Seven years ago, I watched Paris Roubaix from a support car, alongside the cobbled sections and in the finishing velodrome. In terms of sporting drama, it has it all: incredible endurance, feats of athleticism, hair-raising spills and exciting, attacking racing.
It's one of those races that never finish in a bunch, but usually in shattered dribs and drabs of survivors who've made it to the velodrome – often riding caked in mud, bleeding and jarred to the bone. There can't be a better way for Bauer and Scully to pay tribute to the men of the New Zealand Cycling Corps.
Paris Roubaix will be on Sky Sports 2 from 9pm on Sunday night.
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