Cycling Upade: The Flanders, Roubaix Double

In the spring each year we get the best two weekends of cycling back to back with the Tour of Flanders followed by Paris-Roubaix. Though very different these two races are very similar as both are seen as races to be won by strong men.

Flanders follows a basic pattern. The first half is run through beautiful country on fairly flat and narrow roads, then the second half hits old cobbled farm roads with gradients of up to 20% and that's when the strong men show their stuff.

Paris-Roubaix is all about the cobbles and they come early and often, but sitting around the halfway mark the riders get hit with the Arenberg forest. The cobbles there, though better now after some renovations a few years back, are the toughest they will face all day and often a favorite crashes out here, or gets a puncture, or simply shows they don't have the strength to compete. So Arenberg kicks off the second half of the race when all the contenders come forward and real racing begins.
Because these are races of endourance and strength they are dominated by racers in their late 20's to mid 30's. Younger riders simply don't have the strength and endurance to handle these tough conditions. At least that was the general wisdom until Tom Boonen came along.

At 22 Boonen took third in the 2002 Paris-Roubaix and everyone immediately understood what a special talent the cycling world had. At 25 he won the Flanders, Roubaix double taken them both. In 2006 he won Flanders again and established himself as a dominant rider of these tough classics. He would win Roubaix again in 2008 and 2009 and both years was the strongest rider at Flanders but got stuck playing a defensive role for his teammate who won both years.

The last couple of years didn't go so well for Boonen. He was struggling to win races, tested positive for recreational cocaine, and had a bad knee injury and illnesses. It looked like at 30 Boonen was done.

However, he started off this year with good form and coming into this spring there was a lot of anticipation that he was back and he proved it over these last two weeks taking his second double of Flanders-Roubaix. He has now won Roubaix four times and Flanders three times. This makes him one of the best classics riders of all time and at 32 he still has time to win a few more. He also has now won over 100 races in his career making him one of the best professional cyclists in history.