Tom Boonen was a rider who was hard to miss in the peloton. The Belgian absolutely dominated the one-day classics for the better part of a decade during a pro career that began in 2002.
Now, a piece, or rather, pieces of Boonen will be permanently on display in Maarkedal, Belgium. A sculpture of Boonen’s legs was unveiled at the top of the Flemish hill climb called the Taaienberg, which is paved with cobblestones and is known locally as “Boonenberg.”
Posing for the piece that literally created a cast of his legs was no joke. “That took about six hours,” Boonen told the Dutch newspaper Nieuwsblad. “And that was no laughing matter. I had to stand—leg by leg—for three hours on one and three hours on the other. Afterwards my legs were painted with a kind of latex and finally they were also put in plaster.”
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Boonen raced for the U.S. Postal Service Team for his first year as a professional before moving to the Quick Step team, which was his racing home until he retired fourteen years later. As the leader of the Quick Step squad, Boonen won the E3 Saxobank Classic a record five times, Paris-Robaix four times, the Tour of Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem, and Kuurne-Brissels-Kuurne three times each. This small sampling of his win list makes it clear why he’s one of the most beloved professional athletes in Belgium to this day, despite retiring from professional cycling in 2017.
Natascha Grief got her first bike shop job before she was old enough to drink. After a six-year stint as a mechanic, earning a couple pro-mechanic certifications and her USA Cycling Race Mechanics license, she became obsessed with framebuilding and decided she wanted to do that next. After Albert Eistentraut literally shooed her off his doorstep, admonishing that if she pursued framebuilding she will be poor forever, she landed an apprenticeship with framebuilder Brent Steelman in her hometown of Redwood City, CA. After that, she spent several years working for both large and not-so-large cycling brands. Somewhere in there she also became a certified bike fitter. Natascha then became a certified personal trainer and spent nine years honing her skills as a trainer and coach, while also teaching Spin. During the dumpster fire that was the year 2020, she opened a fitness studio and began contributing regularly to Runner’s World and Bicycling as a freelance writer. In 2022, she joined the staff of Bicycling as News Editor.
