Tom Boonen on van der Poel's Roubaix tilt: "I think he will win"

After last year's disappointing result, Mathieu van der Poel is returning to the 'Hell of the North' with the ambition of conquering the cobbles and is coming in with a 100% success rate in the cobbles this season. Tom Bonnen, one of the most iconic figures of the race's history gave an insight on the Dutch super-talent's chances.

In an interview with VeloNews, the former four-time winner of the French classic has talked about van der Poel's chances of taking his debut win: “I think he will win. I was standing on the side of the road in the Tour of Flanders. Tadej Pogačar tried to play with Van der Poel on the second passage of the Oude Kwaremont, but the latter managed to take advantage of the pursuers.”

“Van der Poel is super smart and I like that about him. He doesn't have to be the strongest in the race. He just fights for the win and can then create his own circumstances. Mathieu uses everything he has to win a race," Boonen said.

After a late start to the season, the Alpecin-Fenix rider took no time to show his strong form and into a podium at Milano-Sanremo. After winning Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Tour des Flandres, motivation must be sky high for van der Poel, who will now try to obtain the win that he was close to obtaining in his debut last year in the muddy cobbled roads.

He will face heavy competition however from the likes of Wout van Aert, Mads Pedersen, Kasper Asgreen and many more. He's talked about his former team aswell: “With Quick-Step-Alpha Vinyl, it's just bad luck and bad luck. They had a lot of sick riders and I said in a podcast five or six weeks ago that they could forget about the spring classics this year. If seven or eight guys in the classic squad get sick, you can shake it. That can no longer be made good. From that moment it was all over. On to next year. Without illness, Kasper Asgreen would have competed for the win.”

“Only Yves Lampaert, Zdeněk Štybar and Asgreen got sick. With Tim Declercq it was unclear whether he could cycle again at all. When you have so much bad luck, it's not realistic to expect results. And if you also get demotivated, the situation will only get worse. They still have a strong classic core, but they also just don't have a leader like Jumbo-Visma and Alpecin-Fenix," he concluded.