Philippe Gilbert may be 33 years of age and boast a mightily impressive palmares, but he says that still feels youthful and has much more he wants to achieve before hanging up his wheels.
"I don't even know when I'm going to stop," he says, talking to media at BMC's training camp in Spain on Thursday. "Look at [Davide] Rebellin, he's like 44 – imagine!"
Gilbert also looks to Fabian Cancellara and Tom Boonen, fellow giants of the Classics who are set to retire next year, and notes: "They had success really quickly, [but] I had to wait like a few years to get to the top level. I guess they had a lot of pressure in their lives, also they won a lot more of the big races, so you then have a different view of your sport. So, for me, I feel like I'm only starting now."
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Gilbert does himself a disservice; he has won the World Championships, the Giro di Lombardia, stages in all three Grand Tours, and each of the Ardennes Classics – notably all three in the same glittering spring of 2011. However, he identifies Milan-San Remo, the Tour of Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix as absent from his palmares.
"I turn 34 next year, so it's time," he says. "I don't know [if it will be next year]. Roubaix I don't do, for sure. Flanders I don't know yet."
Part of the problem can be put down to tension with Greg Van Avermaet, who has finished on the podium there in the past two years and is rumoured to be less than keen of the idea of having Gilbert on the team for the cobbles. What is certain is that he'll start his season at the Dubai Tour, before doing the Clásica de Almería, the Vuelta a Murcia, the Ruta del Sol, then Het Nieuwsblad, Paris-Nice, and Milan-San Remo, all before another shot at the Ardennes.
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