Boonen's Last Blast

As Tom Boonen prepares for his final race, James Shrubsall talks to the man aiming to become the most successful Paris-Roubaix rider ever

- James Shrubsall

When Tom Boonen rolls away from the start line in Compiègne next month, it will be his last Paris- Roubaix — and last race — of a long and very successful career.

Flanked by some of the best Classics domestiques in cycling, the Belgian will put everything on the line in a bid to score a fifth victory in the Hell of the North, surpassing ‘Monsieur Paris-Roubaix’ himself Roger De Vlaeminck, before resigning on the spot from professional cycling.

Many riders might find it difficult to work up an appetite for hard training with the prospect of a retirement that’s less on the horizon as it is just around the next corner. But this is Tom Boonen and Paris-Roubaix. ‘Tommeke’ won’t be ready to stop fighting tooth and nail until he crosses the line in Roubaix’s municipal velodrome on the afternoon of Sunday, April 9.

He admits to becoming momentarily bogged down in wistful nostalgia post his final World Championship road race in Qatar last September, but throughout the following months he never took his eye off the prize.

“It was a little bit difficult to confront it after the Worlds,” he tells Cycling Weekly. “I stayed in Qatar for a week with the family,so the day after the Worlds I was already knocked off for the holiday, I was like, ‘This is really the last World Championship, last winter coming up, last season coming up...’

“But the moment I got back home I got busy again and started training again, and from that moment until now, not one moment was a hassle.”