After being hospitalized for three days last week due to a severe intestinal infection, Tom Boonen is hoping to be able to return to group training after the weekend and to begin to catch up on the time spent away from the bike.
“I think Tom will train with the team on Monday,” said his directeur sportif Wilfried Peeters, according to Het Nieuwsblad. “I hope so, because this is actually the only time of the year when the whole team is together. Then everyone goes in different directions.”
The Omega Pharma Quick Step riders are travelling to Majorca and will train there until December 19th.
Boonen fell ill last week ago and in addition to not being able to attend the teambuilding camp in Slovakia, was forced to miss the Boonen and Friends charity cyclocross race on Saturday. The Classic specialist continued to feel affected for several days but has gradually been getting his health back.
He’s now reached a point where he is about to start knuckling down again on his buildup for the first races.
Although Boonen’s key Classic events are still several months away, the riders focussing on those targets tend to try to hit the ground running at the start of the season in order to ensure that they are in peak condition in April.
While the time lost will set him back slightly, Peeters isn’t panicking. “Tom was fortunately a little ahead in his preparation,” he said. “On the Sunday that he ended up in emergency for his stomach examination, he had done 70 kilometres of mountain bike rider. An illness is always an inconvenience for an athlete, but it’s not a disaster.”
Boonen and the Omega Pharma Quick Step team are currently working out what is the optimal racing programme for him. He competed in the Tour de San Luis last year and showed he was back in his old race-winning form when he took stage seven there.
This time round, the team may send him back to the same race, or he may instead elect to start on February 3rd in the Tour of Qatar.
San Luis begins on January 21st and so would enable him to begin honing his race form even earlier, but much will depend on how his physical shape is and whether or not he and the team believe it would be counterproductive to head there after the disruption to his training.