The essence of 'de Ronde'

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Waiting for the bunch(Image credit: Sirotti)

Tales from the cobbled peloton, April 1, 2006

So, you want to time the break? What better than your own Ronde wristwatch from Rodania, including "a sport version provided with hour, minute and second hands, date, heavy rust-free metal body, shock-resistant mechanism and shatterproof glass, tested at 100 metres below water, equipped with massive rust-free steel strap with double slot for safety"? Or perhaps you're better at guessing the future than timing the present. OK… name the first three in the right order and you'll receive a hefty prize from Eddy Merckx. But be warned: you'll be one of more than 80,000 sending a prediction to Het Nieuwsblad, the organising newspaper.

He and his paper, Sportwereld, wanted a Flemish race to rival Liège-Bastogne-Liège in the south. A century ago, the French-speaking south had the power and the money. Now the position is reversed but the bitterness remains. Van Wijnendaele's race is as much a political statement today as when it started two weeks before Easter 1913. When you see those waving yellow flags printed with black lions, remember they are symbols not of Belgium but of Flanders and that for many they are the flag of Flemish separation.

Unfortunately it was such a spectacle that every driver in Flanders joined in. There weren't that many cars in northern Belgium but they caused such huge jams year after year that it often looked as though every single one was at the race. The police went out on motorbikes and fined drivers but it made little difference and they parked two and sometimes three deep on the climbs. Only fuel rationing in the war ended it.

Wartime defeat was swift for Belgium. Belgians went to bed on May 9 in a neutral country and woke to find Germans on the street. Rik van Steenbergen remembered it as a time of racing with what equipment you could get, and smuggling what you lacked. "Smuggling for many people was a way of living. Prizes were always in kind rather than cash, but everyday things were more scarce than the money to buy them and so we didn't mind", he said.

"When I turned pro in 1945, I couldn't ride the Tour of Flanders straight away. There were three categories of rider: road riders A, road riders B, and track riders. I was registered with the federation as a track rider. At first they wouldn't let me ride the national championship. But Jean van Buggenhout, the manager, got me reclassified on the Wednesday before the race. I won it and became an 'A' rider. Then I could start the year in the Tour of Flanders. I was 19 and I'll probably stay the youngest person ever to win."

With peace, towns and provinces began asphalting roads, taking pride in their recovery. But think of Belgian bike racing, and you think of cobbles. They were missed. They'd become the trademark of the Tour of Flanders. Van Wijnendaele flapped when he heard that asphalting had begun on some of the classic climbs and he bought maps of every track and footpath in the north and sent out helpers to find old boys in bars who knew the real back roads of their region. "It was either that or risk the race ending in a mass sprint, and that's the last thing they wanted," says the historian Tom van Laere.

The length of cobbles got less but their quality got worse. The roads the menders were most likely to have left alone were those that could be passed only by tractor, which meant they were often steep as well. And the more those tractors and machines passed, the worse the roads became. To be honest, it was just what the fans wanted. They raced from hill to hill to watch riders touch wheels and fall and then run with scraping shoes as they struggled on the tractor's width of steep cobbles between gutters and grass banks.

Bernard Hinault called the Koppenberg a cochonnerie, a foul joke. He rode in 1978 and never went back. "I told the organisers it wasn't a race but a war game. Instead of a race, it's a lottery," explained the five-time Tour de France winner. The Kluisberg was tried in 1955, abandoned until 1966 and didn't reappear until 1992. The 1,600m of the Oude Kwaremont arrived in 1974, the Bosberg and the Taaienberg were introduced in the mid-1970s and Berendries only in 1983.