Over the past couple of years the murmurs of who will replace Tom Boonen as Belgium's leading Classics campaigner have been growing louder and more anxious.
"Could it be him?" they ask. "Yes. No. Perhaps," is the uncertain reply. "What about him?"
When Johann Museeuw came towards the end of his glittering Classics career, there was relatively little head scratching in Belgium as to where his replacement would come from. Boonen was already picking up speed through the bend, ready to ensure the smoothest of baton handovers. Museeuw’s third, and final, Paris-Roubaix victory came in 2002, and a 21-year-old Boonen was standing two steps beneath him on the podium on his debut.
ADVERTISEMENT
Now, though, Boonen, having gone on to surpass Museeuw’s achievements, finds himself in the twilight of his own career, and there’s no immediate candidate stretching out his hand for the next handover. That’s a big concern for the cycling-mad Belgian public. As Het Nieuwsblad journalist Jan Pieter De Vlieger told the Cyclingnews Podcast this week, Boonen has graced the front cover of the newspaper’s annual pre-season supplement for pretty much the entire past decade. His importance to the country goes beyond his mere palmarès; his force of personality has made him an icon and a media pin-up.
Names of various possible successors have passed by the lips of the Belgian public, as Boonen’s powers have shown signs waning in the last couple of seasons. Some reasonable, and some hopelessly skeptical. However, when a 21-year-old neo-pro rode to fifth place at last year's Tour of Flanders, he seemed to emerge as a clear prospect to latch onto, and the Belgian media duly went into overdrive.
“They immediately got really excited,” says Tiesj Benoot, author of that remarkable Flanders ride, “but maybe too excited, I think.”
Benoot compounded the matter by continuing to surpass expectations, finishing second overall at the Belgium Tour, eighth at the Eneco Tour, and fifth at the WorldTour-level GP de Montréal, while lighting up the races in between. Now, as the Belgians gear up for Omloop Net Nieuwsblad this weekend – their true start to the season – one of the big talking points is whether Benoot can take the baton from Boonen.
“It’s not so healthy,” the youngster tells Cyclingnews. “The press like to make comparisons, and they say a lot, ‘you are the guy to follow Tom Boonen, you have to follow him up, if you don’t do it there’s nobody else in Belgium.’”
It is quite a lot of pressure to be placed on young shoulders. Lotto-Soudal boss Marc Sergeant is wary of the braying media, but reckons if anyone can remain grounded, it’s Benoot.
“I’m convinced he’s a guy who keeps his feet on the ground – he’s quite relaxed,” he says of his young star.
That certainly shines through when Cyclingnews meets Benoot in January at a hotel in Mallorca, where the team is preparing for the 2016 season.
“Cycling is a really narrow world. It’s good to get your feet from time to time in the real world,” he says, describing the pursuit that takes up the time when he’s not racing, training, or – as of late – fielding interviews.
He is studying applied economics at Gent University. Now in his fourth year of study, this would ordinarily be his final term, but it will take another four as he balances the books with the bike.
“I already put a lot of work into it, so I don’t want to drop it now. Mentally it’s nice to be in another world sometimes. You can talk about other things to cycling.”
Feeling slightly guilty for steering the conversation back to cycling, we ask Benoot if he surprised himself by his remarkable adaptation to life as a professional cyclist.
You can read more at Cyclingnews.com
via Cyclingnews Latest Interviews and Features http://ift.tt/1S6l9ol
No comments:
Post a Comment