The legendary Tour of Flanders: Public holidays in an entire region of Belgium
Tim Farin
· 25.03.2024
The best time for pictures and videos. The sun is low and casts a harmonious light on the heart of Flanders. It's hard to believe, but Lotte Kopecky is standing in front of a spring idyll as the Flemish radio camera films her interview for the main news programme. Fruit trees are blossoming in the background and the sky is suddenly blue. It is the gentle, beautiful end to the most important weekend for convinced Flemings - and here stands the woman who has saved the honour of her homeland, smiling into the microphone after rainy, windy and cold days. Now the sun can finally shine.
Beforehand, cycling fans and nostalgics got exactly what the media had been anticipating all week and the pros had been dreading. As always, there was huge hype in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, with this monument to cycling dominating events throughout the week - and with it the question of whether the first weekend in April would provide the weather for heroics.
Tour of Flanders: The more heroic - the better!
It's an extraordinary week for the daily newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws, because its nine cycling reporters are not the only ones covering the "Ronde van Vlaanderen" with an eye on Sunday's spectacle. The race is "like a spider that stretches its legs everywhere", says Bart Audoore, who has been writing about cycling at HLN since 2013 after a long stint as a football reporter. He says this without smiling. The Ronde is so big that no department can ignore it. Especially not the meteorologists. "Everyone wants to know what the weather will be like. And everyone wants rain," says Audoore, "the more heroic it gets, the better."
There are some cycling events that are deeply rooted in the culture of their regions. However, it is no exaggeration to emphasise the Tour of Flanders as the outstanding event among them. Bart Audoore, the eloquent and thoughtful sports reporter, joins almost 30 colleagues at a press conference organised by the Jumbo-Visma team at short notice on the Thursday before the race. 30 media people at a team press conference is quite a number.
Audoore says that he - who is in his mid-forties - loves writing about cycling. Nevertheless, he is sad to be working at the weekend. "It's the worst day of the year," says the journalist, who loves his job but loves the Ronde even more. He has been following the race with his parents and siblings since 1986 and would love to do it again, together with his two children - and remember how, as a young boy, he pushed the bloodied Allan Peiper after he crashed in front of him on the Taaienberg. But now Audoore is on duty and the matter is too important for him to take time off.
Attempted explanation for extraterrestrials
Of course, it is the Belgian superstar par excellence who attracts the attention of the media: The camera lenses are already aligned half an hour before Wout van Aert's appearance. So it's a little surprising that Audoore makes time for an interview with Frenchman Christophe Laporte and two pages of space in the newspaper.
But that only works "in Wout's slipstream", says the expert, a rider like Laporte takes on a different relevance during the Ronde week, even in Flanders. And of course Audoore has a colleague with him who is also writing a story about van Aert's prospects. He in turn plays it cool in view of the hype, arrives on time for the press conference and calmly answers all questions, including this one: How would he explain to an alien what the Tour of Flanders means?
His answer: "It's like a bank holiday. People come from all over, they want to see the first riders drive past. My advice: just come here and experience it for yourself."
Tour of Flanders - People from 46 nations
As if the cycling fans had known: on the Thursday before the race, British, Italian, Spanish and Scandinavian cars roll into the competition area. They are unmistakably cycling fans, many of them lean, most of them in sportswear, but above all with bicycles on the roofs of their cars. They are still in Ghent before the weather turns before the weekend and heavy rain sets in on Friday night. All of them, who speak Italian, English and Spanish at breakfast in the hotel in the morning, want to feel the "Ronde" experience on their own bodies at the weekend.
The Tour of Flanders not only attracts spectators, but also amateur cyclists to an extreme degree. Traditionally, every year the day before the professional races, there is an amateur edition. Christophe Impens is the person responsible for cycling at the organiser Golazo, and he reports that people from 46 nations have registered for the oversized RTF; a total of 16,000 people want to take part - a good 10,000 of them come from abroad.
There were already more participants, the record was 22,000, but then the administration stopped the growth. The Tour of Flanders is also a tourist magnet. Participants stay an average of 2.5 nights, the hotel owners are happy, the prices go up noticeably from the middle of the week. A room in a budget hotel is no longer available for less than 125 euros - at the lower end of the star scale.
"Godfather van de koers"
The weather is so dreadful on Friday that you hardly dare look outside. But people are out and about in the country, and not just on holiday. There's something more important to do first. The amateur riders pick up their race numbers in Oudenaarde, the media representatives travel to press events, VIP guests to exclusive events. The most prominent of all Belgian teams, Soudal Quick-Step, receives guests at the headquarters of its first main sponsor.
Team boss Patrick Lefevere, who has recently been featured in the documentary series "Godfather van de koers" (Godfather of Racing) on Flemish TV, calls on his riders to save the team's honour. The classics season was uncharacteristically weak by his standards. That won't change on Sunday either. Ruben Desmet, President of the Soils division at Uniflor and therefore boss of the Quick Step brand, is there for the press event, of course. "Many of our people come from this area, so it's very motivating when one of our riders wins," says Desmet.
Cycling is widespread among his employees; he also rides a racing bike and is a VIP on the professional course just before the professionals on Sunday. "I'm in good shape," he says. But the Ronde is also a perfect opportunity to invite important business partners. The most important one of the year for Quick Step. This also applies to other sponsors. Anyone driving past the Flemish Ardennes in the days surrounding the Tour of Flanders will see large white areas between the trees, woods and fields from a distance - not fields of snow, but the enormous tents for the invited guests at the edge of the route.
The seasoned riders from Flanders explain at the numerous events what it feels like to climb over the "Kasseien". This was also the case on Friday evening, when former pro and current talent scout Tim Meeusen from Team Bora-Hansgrohe got the international guests of a textile company in the mood. "It's an advantage if you were born here," says Meeusen about this race. "This is Flanders, this is passion," he tells the guests, some of whom seem unsettled, "you will experience it tomorrow on the cobbles."
Tour of Flanders: The hour for heroic deeds
The passion is so great that the next day, a police-supervised block clearance is necessary before the Koppenberg. The participants of "We Ride Flanders" roll and stand in front of the notorious climb for a good 20 minutes. Brecht Plasschaert, 27, from Ghent, has just been in a hurry at the refreshment point, he cools down too quickly in the wind on 1 April and is now standing on the cycle path, wet and freezing, just like everyone else. An older participant falls over, laughs, gets up and rolls on.
It's the hour for heroics. "I've been following cycling since I was little and this has always been my dream," says Iker Diez Beldarrain from Bilbao, "I was really scared of the rain and the rumble of the stones, but now I'm enjoying it." He draws inverted commas in the air, but he also laughs as he looks ahead to the finale of the Ronde. The real Flandrien feeling is inevitable on this day on the wet and cold roads of the region.
Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo also took to the saddle in the morning in the Classics weather and ventured onto the course together with Golazo manager Christophe Impens and David Lappartient, the head of the cycling world federation. The Prime Minister even had his son with him; he was surprisingly fit for a top politician, Impens reported afterwards.
Cheered up for the climax
On the highest day of the festival, an astonishing number of people are already in the mood surprisingly early. Standing in the mud, they open their beer cans where farmers would otherwise be tilling their fields. The weather is still bad enough for a good atmosphere, although it is no longer raining, the streets are still damp, the wind is cold and the sky is grey. Jerome Devenyns holds a beer in one hand and a bottle of lemonade in the other; he has added vodka. "Tomorrow will be painful," says the young man, who claims to be the cousin of professional cyclist Dries Devenyns.
The young man comes from here, and of course he immediately runs from the screen on the field over to the fence that provides security in front of the cobblestone passage on the Oude Kwaremont. There are tens of thousands of fans here, most of them drunk. Further up the hill is a group of young Basques - 15 of them by now. The first two had met by chance at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad at the end of February, with more and more compatriots joining them from classic to classic.
They do it like real Flemings: They wait in the mud in the icy wind and cheer on the leading group as well as the very last ones. And with the Kwaremont, they have not only chosen the best place for cult and party, but also the climb where the two decisions of the day will be made. The solo attacks by Tadej Pogacar and later Lotte Kopecky happen right here, in front of the roaring fans and the equally cheerful VIPs in the tents just opposite.
There is little sign of this spectacle in the finish town of Oudenaarde. Here, on the motorway-like approach to the finish, there is relatively little going on again. The journalists do their work, the riders roll off to their buses, the winners are still being passed around. It takes hours for Tadej Pogacar to answer all the questions and then turn up at the press conference. Will the winner satisfy the Flemings?
"Yes, this is a champion," says journalist Bart Audoore, who is working hard on this festive day, "and the Ronde was another really thrilling race," he adds. His paper also has the local hero for the lead story. Lotte Kopecky celebrates the last triumph on a grey Sunday in Flanders - and then spring finally makes an appearance.
Tour of Flanders - The winner
Tadej Pogacar
The Belgian colleagues didn't have to rummage around for historical comparisons for long. Was someone like Eddy Merckx sitting in front of them? After all, Tadej Pogacar had just won the Tour of Flanders. But the smiling young man didn't make any big announcements, he just looked relaxed and at ease after his triumph in Oudenaarde.
"I just ride my races," said Pogacar after the victory, "I feel grateful that I can ride all these races and be competitive at this level." The rather lightweight tour specialist won the "Ronde" with a spirited attack on the Oude Kwaremont, where he shook off Mathieu van der Poel. The 24-year-old Slovenian has now won his third Monument - and his judgement afterwards was clear. "This is a special race, probably even the best one-day race in the world."
Tour of Flanders - The winner
Lotte Kopecky
Yes, a lot of pressure had fallen off Lotte Kopecky, she said after her victory in Oudenaarde. She had not only felt the internal pressure in her team SD Worx, where Demi Vollering certainly also had her sights set on victory that day. The woman from near Antwerp had also sensed the fans' desire for her to win her home race, just like last year.
However, the pressure turned into a sense of well-being. "I felt that I had a whole country behind me," said Kopecky. Accordingly, she turned up the heat as the race entered the decisive phase. On the Oude Kwaremont, Kopecky shook off her companion Silvia Persico from Team UAE Emirates well before the finish. She then rolled safely solo towards the finish and was already laughing on the long finishing straight, flirting with the motorbike camera. A milestone for women's cycling: more than a million viewers watched her victory on Belgian television.
