Project Boom
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With his focus turned to the road, Boom raced just two cyclo-cross events in 2010. He won one, the Dutch National Championships, on a prototype Giant cyclo-cross bike. (Photo: Cor Vos)
;setCaption(document.image_thumb); "With his focus turned to the road, Boom raced just two cyclo-cross events in 2010. He won one, the Dutch National Championships, on a prototype Giant cyclo-cross bike. (Photo: Cor Vos)")
;setCaption(document.image_extra_one_thumb); "Boom spent most of his winter training on his Giant TCR Advanced SL, preparing for the spring classics.")
Rabo’s Dutch cyclo-cross champ turns his attention to the spring classics
At 24, Lars Boom is already on his way to owning one of the most complete trophy collections of any professional cyclist. The Dutch Rabobank rider from Vlijmen has won multiple Cyclo-cross World Championships, a major European stage race and a stage at the Vuelta a España. He even donned the climber’s jersey for a day at the 2009 Vuelta, his first grand tour.
Few other riders can claim such success in both the mud-splattered Northern European Lowlands and the arid mountains of Spain.
Now Boom is setting his sights on the races he has long dreamed of: the mighty Spring Classics. “I want to do the big races,” Boom told CyclingNews.com at the conclusion of his rookie pro road racing season last fall. “Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold—they are the ones that motivate me.”
This past year has been a transitional one for Boom. After dominating cyclo-cross at every level—winning World Championships as a junior, Under-23 and Elite Professional—he announced his aspirations in road racing. It was no great shock—Boom had already dabbled on the road as an amateur, and he rode to the 2007 U-23 Time Trial World Championship in Spain.
Boom’s road to the spring classics began in earnest a year ago, when he was called up from Rabobank’s Continental Team to the ProTour squad. He proved a quick learner, riding his Giant TCR Advanced SL to his first major stage-race victory at the five-day Tour of Belgium in May.
In August Boom embarked on his first grand tour, the three-week Tour of Spain, and on the 15th stage he launched a daring solo attack on the day’s key climb. Boom held on for the win, claiming another first: a grand tour stage win. He went on to finish 15th overall.
The transition to road racing was proving a success.
As the 2009 road season concluded last fall, Boom found himself in unfamiliar territory. Instead of his usual autumn routine of ramping up for cyclo-cross, he began prepping for this year’s spring classics. Hurdling barriers and skidding across frozen cow fields would have to wait for now. Instead, he headed south to pile up base miles in the mild temperatures.
Boom admits it felt strange. “In January, instead of getting ready for the Cyclocross World Championships in the Czech Republic, I was doing six-hour road rides in Spain,” he said. “I watched the cyclo-cross races from the hotel on my laptop computer.”
Though his focus is clearly on the upcoming road season, Boom still managed a short midwinter return to cyclo-cross. His 2010 ’cross season lasted exactly eight days, during which he raced twice.
The second of those two races was the Dutch National Championships in Heerlen. Boom showed up at the January 10 race to defend his National Champion’s jersey, and as he rolled to the start line in frigid temperatures, it was immediately clear he wasn’t messing around. He rode a matte-black prototype Giant TCX composite cyclo-cross bike. Gerben de Knegt, his Rabobank teammate, had one too.
Sure enough, after a hard-fought battle, Boom and de Knegt finished first and second. It was an important milestone in the prototyping phase of the next-generation composite TCX. When it comes to developing new technologies, this is how Giant does it. Nothing beats product testing under the most demanding conditions possible, and the feedback from athlete partners like Boom is critical to the process.
“The new compositeTCX is a big step forward,” Boom said. “It’s lightweight, stiff, and handled incredibly well in some challenging conditions.”
Then, just like that, Boom’s ’cross season was over. He placed his fifth Dutch National Cyclo-cross medal in the trophy case, hung up the TCX, and caught a flight back to Spain.
As Rabobank team training camp commenced in mid-January in Spain, Boom swung a leg over his other composite race rig, the Giant TCR Advanced SL. It’s the bike he rode to victory at the Vuelta last September and the one he’ll rely on as he takes to the cobbles this spring.
Created and developed at C-Tech, Giant’s composite engineering think tank, the TCR Advanced SL features a laundry list of technical innovations that have allowed the bike, and Rabobank pros like Boom, to redefine the rules of performance.
It starts with the material, a raw composite called T-800 that’s meticulously woven at Giant’s own composite factory. Giant takes that material and employs its unique, unparalleled construction techniques to produce a bike that best balances the three most desired traits for grueling 260-kilometer races like Paris-Roubaix: weight, stiffness and comfort.
And the crux of the story is this: Boom and every one of his Rabobank teammates will roar into the Spring Classics with the confidence that comes from knowing Giant has carefully conceived and controlled every step of the process from which the bikes are born. Materials, engineering, design, construction, prototyping. No other major bike brand can claim the same.
Project Boom, target Spring Classics. It’s all systems go.
At 24, Lars Boom is already on his way to owning one of the most complete trophy collections of any professional cyclist. The Dutch Rabobank rider from Vlijmen has won multiple Cyclo-cross World Championships, a major European stage race and a stage at the Vuelta a España. He even donned the climber’s jersey for a day at the 2009 Vuelta, his first grand tour.
Few other riders can claim such success in both the mud-splattered Northern European Lowlands and the arid mountains of Spain.
Now Boom is setting his sights on the races he has long dreamed of: the mighty Spring Classics. “I want to do the big races,” Boom told CyclingNews.com at the conclusion of his rookie pro road racing season last fall. “Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold—they are the ones that motivate me.”
This past year has been a transitional one for Boom. After dominating cyclo-cross at every level—winning World Championships as a junior, Under-23 and Elite Professional—he announced his aspirations in road racing. It was no great shock—Boom had already dabbled on the road as an amateur, and he rode to the 2007 U-23 Time Trial World Championship in Spain.
Boom’s road to the spring classics began in earnest a year ago, when he was called up from Rabobank’s Continental Team to the ProTour squad. He proved a quick learner, riding his Giant TCR Advanced SL to his first major stage-race victory at the five-day Tour of Belgium in May.
In August Boom embarked on his first grand tour, the three-week Tour of Spain, and on the 15th stage he launched a daring solo attack on the day’s key climb. Boom held on for the win, claiming another first: a grand tour stage win. He went on to finish 15th overall.
The transition to road racing was proving a success.
As the 2009 road season concluded last fall, Boom found himself in unfamiliar territory. Instead of his usual autumn routine of ramping up for cyclo-cross, he began prepping for this year’s spring classics. Hurdling barriers and skidding across frozen cow fields would have to wait for now. Instead, he headed south to pile up base miles in the mild temperatures.
Boom admits it felt strange. “In January, instead of getting ready for the Cyclocross World Championships in the Czech Republic, I was doing six-hour road rides in Spain,” he said. “I watched the cyclo-cross races from the hotel on my laptop computer.”
Though his focus is clearly on the upcoming road season, Boom still managed a short midwinter return to cyclo-cross. His 2010 ’cross season lasted exactly eight days, during which he raced twice.
The second of those two races was the Dutch National Championships in Heerlen. Boom showed up at the January 10 race to defend his National Champion’s jersey, and as he rolled to the start line in frigid temperatures, it was immediately clear he wasn’t messing around. He rode a matte-black prototype Giant TCX composite cyclo-cross bike. Gerben de Knegt, his Rabobank teammate, had one too.
Sure enough, after a hard-fought battle, Boom and de Knegt finished first and second. It was an important milestone in the prototyping phase of the next-generation composite TCX. When it comes to developing new technologies, this is how Giant does it. Nothing beats product testing under the most demanding conditions possible, and the feedback from athlete partners like Boom is critical to the process.
“The new compositeTCX is a big step forward,” Boom said. “It’s lightweight, stiff, and handled incredibly well in some challenging conditions.”
Then, just like that, Boom’s ’cross season was over. He placed his fifth Dutch National Cyclo-cross medal in the trophy case, hung up the TCX, and caught a flight back to Spain.
As Rabobank team training camp commenced in mid-January in Spain, Boom swung a leg over his other composite race rig, the Giant TCR Advanced SL. It’s the bike he rode to victory at the Vuelta last September and the one he’ll rely on as he takes to the cobbles this spring.
Created and developed at C-Tech, Giant’s composite engineering think tank, the TCR Advanced SL features a laundry list of technical innovations that have allowed the bike, and Rabobank pros like Boom, to redefine the rules of performance.
It starts with the material, a raw composite called T-800 that’s meticulously woven at Giant’s own composite factory. Giant takes that material and employs its unique, unparalleled construction techniques to produce a bike that best balances the three most desired traits for grueling 260-kilometer races like Paris-Roubaix: weight, stiffness and comfort.
And the crux of the story is this: Boom and every one of his Rabobank teammates will roar into the Spring Classics with the confidence that comes from knowing Giant has carefully conceived and controlled every step of the process from which the bikes are born. Materials, engineering, design, construction, prototyping. No other major bike brand can claim the same.
Project Boom, target Spring Classics. It’s all systems go.
23 February 2010
