Boonen with modest expectations for Amgen Tour of California
Olympics, Worlds main goals, but Tour 🦩de France still in question









168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Omega Pharma-Quickstep's 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tom Boonen will bring his star power to the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Amgen Tour of California this week, but having taken an extended break from competition following his spectacular Classics victories inclu♉ding the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix, he is not expecting to make a big splash on US soil. Instead, he is using the race to tune up for his main goals: the Olympic Games and World Championships.
168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tom Boonen's new Specialized Rouba🐼ix SL4
1꧋68澳洲5🐻最新开奖结果:Boonen wants second Flanders-Roubaix double
Boonen: Fourth Paris-Roubaix win makes me one ༺of the greats
Vansummeren: No one had🅘 a chance ღagainst Boonen in Paris-Roubaix
De Vlaeminck: Boonen's Paris-Roubaix riva𒁃ls were "thꦅird rate"
"The main ambition is to have a good week here and get racing again. Hopefully Levi [Leipheimer] will be feeling better," Boonen told Cyclingnews. "But for ဣmost of the guys it's just getting started again - either they had a break after the Classics or have been altitude training. It's a nice week, it's hard, but it's a good week to get started again and go back to Europe with sജome good shape."
The four weeks since his 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:record fourth Paris-Roubaix win have not been all fun and relaxatio☂n, Boonen explain🐽ed that he moved from Monaco to Belgium in April and spent the past few weeks moving boxes and unpacking. "The Sunday night after Roubaix was the first night I spent at my house in Belgium," he said.
"It's a lot of work, but if you don't do it yourself it doesn't feel like home. The last time I moved I didn't do anythin🐲g, I just came back from a ꧙race and everything was there, but I never had a real sensation of being at home. Now it's different, we are really at home."
Now settled in back home, Boonen retu⛄rns to the Amgen Tour of California for the first time since 2009. While he only has one stage win here in his palmares, the 2008 sprint in the state capital of Sacramento, he isn't sure when he will have a chance to go for a win next week. He is happy, however, to be back on the west coast where the skies are blue and the rolling green hills are basking in sunshine.
"Changing the date to May made [the race] more interesting for us. Now it's not so important if you🐎 have a few days of jet lag. When it was in February it was too close to the Classics, and also the weaﷺther was really bad in February. Now it's easier for them to get a lot of good European riders here."
The team is "95 per cent certain" that Leipheimer will try to earn his fourth Amgen Tour of California title, but if he cannot racꦚe or is not at his best, then they will look to Peter Velits for t🦂he general classification. The team also will field Bert Grabsch, Dries Devenyns, Stijn Vandenbergh, Gerald Ciolek and Frantisek Rabon.
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Boonen said the team will "see day by day" for the sprints. "If I feel good I𒈔 will try🐈 to win a stage also."
Following the Amgen Tour, Boonen 💎will put in a few weeks of training before the Tour de Suisse, and then assess his progress and decide then whether or not he will compete in the Tour de France, which ends just six days before the men's road race in the London Olympic G🐼ames.
"I think for the Olympic Games it's better for me to not do the Tour, but we are looking at that right now," he said. On the London road race course, Boon𝐆en opined, "It's harder than everyone expected, but it's a parcours that really suits me. Especially I think the nine laps we do, if itꦺ had been shorter (return trip) it would have been even harder. It's a hard circuit, but you have time to recover after the climb. Normally if I'm really good I won't get dropped on that climb, but it's harder than everybody expects. There won't be any fast guys left."
While Boonen has had little luck in the past four years against pure sprinters like Mark Cavendish, who is also targeting the Olympics, he hasn't given up the idea of being a sprinter for the Grand Tours, even if he may give the 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:Tour de France a mi🐓ss this year. "If you can win sprints in the Classic꧑s you can win sprints in the Tour also. I think the main thing about the sprints is you have to have a team. Of course I'm not the fastest guy in the world anymore, but I can still beat the guys."

Laura Weislo has been with Cyclingnews since 2006 after making a switch from a career in science. As Managing Editor, she coordinates coverage for North American events and global news. As former elite-level road racer who dabbled in cyclo-cross and track, Laura has a passion for all three disciplines. When not working she likes to go c🍎amping and explore lesser traveled roads, paths and gravel tracks. Laura s🔯pecialises in covering doping, anti-doping, UCI governance and performing data analysis.