Tom Boonen refuses to comment on Fabian Cancellara's alleged mechanical doping: "I'll keep my thoughts to myself"

The 2010 Tour of Flanders was a true exhibition by Fabian Cancellara. He took 1:15 to his historic rival Tom Boonen and 2:11 to Philippe Gilbert at the finish line. However, because of the form and domination with which he took the win, rumors began to surface of possible mechanical doping by the Swiss. It also didn't help that he changed bikes at a surprising moment and then walked after the podium. All very strange.

Boonen himself spoke about it in a recent episode of the Het Nieuwsblad podcast called Stamcafé Koers: "Because I don't know what's true or not either. I have my thoughts about it, but I'll keep them to myself," says the legendary Belgian classicist.

Despite not wanting to get wet, Boonen confessed that he found his opponent's movement quite strange: "At one point, before that left turn, I saw him make all the effort in the world to sit on the right side of the road. Then he jumped off his bike and grabbed a new one. Three seconds later he was back beside me. I thought: how weird, planning a bike change there. Why in the world did that happen? I don't know."

The most shocking thing was not the simple fact of changing bikes, but that Cancellara went to the press room and the doping control walking, instead of pedaling like his companions on the podium: "At the finish in Ninove, there was quite a distance between the podium and the press room and the doping control. So everyone was always on a bike. And from there back to the buses, because they were a bit further away. When we came out of the stage, there was one bike missing. We (Tom Boonen and Philippe Gilbert) took our bike, while he was struggling on foot to get through all the people. I didn't think about it at the time, but then you start to think about it."

Tom Boonen does not accuse Fabian Cancellara of having used a mechanical bike, but he does not rule it out either. What he does confirm is that the relationship between the two changed from that moment on: "Fabian is Fabian, a special person, but it's not that I didn't get along. I rode very nice races with them. And until that year I didn't live anything with him."

"True or false, after that I put a bit of a barrier between Fabian and myself. That's my responsibility: I didn't want it anymore. And that may have been something misinterpreted on the other side. Whether it's true or not, I don't think I suffered any harm from it then. And I have nothing to hide. If that were the case with him, then of course it's a different story."