October 06, 2022
Ahead of their joint appearance at Rouleur Live 2022, their first ever on the same stage, we ask was Boonen v Cancellara the greatest ever cobbled classics rivalry?
See Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara and a host of other cycling stars, and the latest kit, at Rouleur Live on November 3-5. Buy your tickets here.
Champions are all well and good, but give me a rivalry over a champion any day. The Boomers always tell me about how great it was to see Eddy Merckx grinding everybody into the dirt back in the day, and I can kind of acknowledge the greatness of somebody who is so clearly better than his or her rivals. However, it’s also one-dimensional. I felt this during the Indurain, Armstrong and Froome years at the Tour. And there was an elemental impressiveness to Marianne Vos winning absolutely everything during her heyday. But the part of me which responds to close, emotionally engaging, surprising racing was unmoved through all these eras. I want to see head-to-heads, unpredictability, competitive tension and, preferably, at least some hint of difference in character and approach.
This is why the 2010 Tour of Flanders is an inflection point in my perspective on the sport in the last couple of decades. On a racing and tactical level, it wasn’t hugely tense or exciting – two riders attacked on the Molenberg with about an hour to go, and left everybody behind. Then one of the pair dropped the other on the Muur van Geraardsbergen (then the penultimate climb of the race and the crux of the route) and rode solo to the finish.
See Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara at Rouleur Live 2022
However, the race represented a lot more. The two riders were Fabian Cancellara, who would win that day, and Tom Boonen. Just on a visual level, it was compelling – each was wearing their respective national champion’s jersey, Cancellara in the bright red and white cross of Switzerland, Boonen in the black-yellow-red tricolour of Belgium. The image of riders in bright primary colours trading blows against the dull brown backdrop of a chilly Flemish spring day summed up an era. Boonen and Cancellara were two of the three or four best ever cobbled classics riders, and they’d both come along at the same time.
Tom Boonen at the 2010 Tour of Flanders (Image: Getty/Lars Ronbog)
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