Boom continues comeback from heart surgery at Volta Limburg Classic

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LottoNL-Jumbo has confirmed Lars Boom will return to racing at the Volta Limburg Classic Saturday. Boom had successful heart surgery for cardiac arrhythmia in January and made his season debut at Paris-Nice. The 32-year-old was a DNS on stage 4 of Paris-Nice and has been forced to skip the Flemish classics as a result.

Boom though has been ruled fit for the 1.1 Volta Limburg Classic and will make his debut in the Dutch race.

"I'm happy that I can race again," Boom said. "The most important thing in this race is to see what my heart rate will do. I'm in shape. But during extreme efforts, my heart doesn't reach the heart rate it should. I hope this race will provide the right peak."

Boom won't be placing any expectations on his results at the race, explaining he simply wants to test himself again in the peloton.

"That's a good thing for me. Last month, I trained uphill a lot during my high altitude training camp. I want to race freely and see how it will go," he said.

Following the 197.5km race that starts and finishes in Eijsden, Boom added he and the team will assess the performance and determine his upcoming race schedule. Including whether a return to the Tour de France in July is possible.

"I'm not going to look at my heart rate meter. We'll analyze the data after the race. It's good to start in a non-World Tour race first," Boom said. "From there we'll see what the plan will be for the upcoming weeks." 

After a winless 2016 season, Boom returned to the winner's books in 2018 with a stage of the BinckBank Tour before winning the time trial at Tour of Britain and sealing his second overall title at the race. 2017, his first back with LottoNL-Jumbo after two seasons with Astana, then ended with surgery to treat his cardiac arrhythmia and saw him miss the Tour Down Under, 'opening weekend' and the entirety of the cobbled classics for 2018.