Tom Boonen was not on form last week in the Tour of Flanders but is still hoping that he will have found his stride again for the race most suited to his qualities: Paris-Roubaix.

 

“It was the first final I did above 6 hours,” Boonen said at a press conference in Kortrijk on Friday. “I was pretty good for 230 kilometres, I really felt able to win the race but in the last 30-40 minutes, I felt the condition was really not good enough. But still I made it ok to the end, and the extra week and race will help me to achieve my best level.”

 

Boonen was also getting over personal grief after his wife suffered a miscarriage. But he is now back with a vengeance as his Omega Pharma-Quick Step team are in need of their leader. They have won the Three Days of De Panne and Dwars door Vlaanderen but have not been able to win in the big Vlassics: E3, Gent-Wevelgem or De Ronde.

 

“Maybe it comes as a surprise but winning classics is not easy, eh? You can have the best team in the world but it’s not a guarantee you’ll win a classic,” said Boonen, who downplayed the idea that the team was overly reliant on him to score major victories.

 

He said that he has no pressure after winning Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne earlier, but he acknowledged that Classics campaigns for men like him are judged solely on the Monuments and so far he has failed.

 

“It has come to the last chance for us for the classics of the north. Most of the time I react pretty well to pressure, so I hope it will be my turn,” he said. “I’ll take the start and hopefully I’ll turn on to automatic mode myself. When I feel cobbles under my wheels I always go fast.”

 

He then turned his attentions to tomorrows race and the conditions that the riders will face and why the race is known as the Hell of the North.

 

“At the moment, there’s a headwind most of the time so it’s really pretty open I think,” he said. “The last two times we had a headwind like this I think [Stuart] O’Grady and [Johan] Vansummeren stayed in front, so it’s a dangerous situation to let a group go off the front because behind the race will be a blocked a little bit. But it all depends on how the race evolves.”

 

Both of those occasions the race was won as the other competitors spent too long looking at Boonen and Cancellara and by the time they realized the danger, they had lost the race.

 

“It would be stupid to look only to Fabian, which I never do,” Boonen said. “We have a history together, we’ve always been competing in the classics and it would be nice to have a duel together. But I hope I’m on my best level: it’s not nice to be in a duel with him when you’re not good.”

 

Despite the dominance the two men have on the Cobbles- they have 6 Flanders and 7 Roubaix titles between them since 2005- they only have had two direct battles on the Cobbles. In 2008, Boonen beat Cancellara in a sprint in Roubaix and Cancellara rode away from Boonen on the Muur van Geraardsbergen in Flanders in 2010.

 

“I think I’ve still beaten him more than he’s beaten me, no?” Boonen said mischievously.

 

Cancellara is now level with Boonen on 3 Flanders titles and should he win tomorrow, he would join Boonen on 4 Roubaix wins.

Boonen will never be forgotten in the history books and for this reason he is not worried by OPQS potentially having another bad Classics campaign.

 

“I’ve been a pro long enough to know that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose,” Boonen grinned. “Even if you have the best team in the world it’s no guarantee that you’ll win a classic, and that’s what makes the sport so beautiful.”