The cobblestones of Paris-Roubaix. (Photo by James Startt)
“All right, I’ve got something to say: It’s better to burn out, than fade away!”
—Joe Elliott
By Joe Lindsey
When Tom Boonen attacked with about 60km left to race in Paris-Roubaix on Sunday, you could read the move as either the apex of confidence or the ultimate in hubris.
Sure, Boonen was in the midst of his best season since 2005, enjoying a competitive resurgence and vigor long missing from his racing. It seemed Boonen was one of those bright stars that burn fast and hot.
In just his fourth full pro season, Boonen was on top of the world, with a Flanders-Roubaix double and two Tour de France stages. He looked to become the dominant Classics rider of his generation, and a formidable sprinter to boot.
But since his previous Roubaix win, in 2009, the big victories became fewer and further between. He was close many times, never more so than 2010, when he was the bridesmaid at Milan-San Remo and Flanders. There were other disappointments: fast starts to the season followed by disappearing results and his admission a year or so ago that he didn’t have the confidence for the dangerous bunch sprints.
This season, though, in the midst of a major transition for his newly merged Omega Pharma-Quick-Step team, Boonen is having a resurgence worthy of the record books.
It’s easy to lose perspective on just how rare Boonen’s Classics campaign has been, as it comes after last year’s superb run by Philippe Gilbert. And since Fabian Cancellara got the Flanders-Roubaix double in 2010, it’s also easy to forget that he and Boonen are two of just a handful of riders to have won both monuments in the same season. (Even Eddy Merckx—three times a Roubaix champion, twice a winner at Flanders—never accomplished that.) Others who have done the double are Rik Van Looy, Roger de Vlaeminck, and Peter Van Petegem.
This is Boonen’s ninth victory of the season, and it’s not mid-April yet. He’s won Roubaix, Flanders, E3 Prijs, Gent-Wevelgem, and a stage of Paris-Nice, most notably. He’s been on the podium four other times including at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
And while he had been close before, his 2012 season has cemented his place as one of the great Classics riders of all time: three Flanders victories, four at Roubaix—a record he shares with de Vlaeminck, whose nickname is “Monsieur Roubaix.” Plus a host of semi-Classics that essentially makes him king of every cobbled hellingen and secteur in Northern Europe.
The prize for winning Roubaix is a cobblestone, a heavy block of the purplish-grey porphyry stone used in many of the race’s toughest stretches of pavé. Boonen now has enough of these rocks of ages to build a foundation.
When he attacked, I wondered if it was too early. His team played the race perfectly, using its cards wisely at every turn. And even had Boonen faded, and the chase group caught up, it was a worthy move. Roubaix is a race for the bold. And because Boonen seized the initiative, his legend—and with it one of the greatest Classics seasons in memory—will not soon fade away.
Kinderkopje
In the spirit of the Flemish word for the “babyhead” stones, here are some small items from yesterday’s Queen of the Classics:
—Surprise finisher: Europcar’s Sebastien Turgot was likely on no expert’s list of podium possibilities, but the French rider turned in a beautiful race to just nip Alessandro Ballan of BMC on the line.
The finish was looking like a three-rider sprint for second when Turgot and Boonen’s teammate Niki Terpstra caught Ballan, Sky’s Juan Antonio Flecha, and Lars Boom of Rabobank in the last lap at the velodrome.
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