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the ronde: inside the tour of flanders, the world's toughest bike race. edward pickering. simon and schuster paperback 292pp illus. £14.99

"Flanders is caught in a tension between its past and its present."

the ronde - ed pickering

there are two reasons to enjoy the so-called classics season, though one of them may have been diminished by the uci's constant quest for dollars at the expense of cycling's heritage. for one, it is/was, the beginning of the season, the time of year when you could be pretty sure that the guys in the races were there, not to train, but to challenge for victory. with so many one-day races in close proximity to each other, the majority of them belgian and many featuring cobbled roads, the past has now arguably been compartmentalised into cycle sport as it once was, evinced to this day in dark and moody monochrome and now that of the modern era.

the second reason is far more trivial, though possibly just a shade activistic. on the day when (according to an overheard, bowmore main street conversation) glasgow rangers football club were in the process of being soundly beaten and the scottish national rugby team was suffering a similar embarrassment, britain produced two under-23 victories in the world cyclocross championships. not quite the classics, i will readily agree, but the opportunity to recite this achievement in the face of total ignorance and obsession with more popular sports, was too good an opportunity to pass up.

with simple sleight of hand, the same insubordination can be applied at the behest of the classics. for these are races with all but inscrutable names: scheldeprijs, dwar doors vlaanderen, omloop het nieuwsblad and kuurn-brussels-kuurne to name but a few. and in order to place a hat on this velocipedinal insolence, no self-respecting cycle fan would ever make mention of the tour of flanders amongst the uninitiated; best always to refer to the ronde van vlaanderen.

there's no real need for any of us to take our relative obscurity lying down.

and though i'd dearly love to be a witness to the situation were it ever to occur, should any member of the civilian population query further with regard to the ronde, edward pickering has written what can only be regarded as the definitive book on the subject. if you wish to bear even a miniscule degree of self-respect as a cycling fan, you must buy this book and read it from cover to cover before this year's event takes place on sunday 1 april. failure to do so will undoubtedly bring accusations of april foolhardiness.

in this thorough and exhaustive celebration of the ronde, mr pickering chooses to separate the old from the new, choosing the 2011 event as the defining year in which the old became encased in its own lovable and revered glass case. it's an era that can oerhaps best be summed up by a quote from one of the race's luminaries, briek schotte.

"Schotte had his own advice for aspiring cyclists about how hard they should be training: 'Ride until you don't know what village you're from.'"

the author later explains why he feels the 2011 race was that which separated the two defined eras, contending that race-winner nick nuyens "...illustrated the difference between old and new Flanders perfectly. He's no Flandrien. He has a degree in media science and communications from Leuven university and he told me one of the courses he enjoyed the most was commercial psychology."

pickering makes constant, yet relevant mention of the flandrien ideal, offering up the definition as "...a rider or individual who endures pain, fatigue and bad weather uncomplainingly [...] A Flandrien is unflashy, tough, ascetic and works hard." the early flandriens were the sons of toil, men who often saw cycling as a means of escaping their agricultural drudgery and offering a more successful and lucrative future. nuyens, as described above, scarcely fits that description; as the rider himself said of his 2011 ronde victory "I realise I was not the biggest rider. I was not the strongest rider. Of course, to win, everything has to fit, like a puzzle."

ed pickering has done more than simply provide us with a history and/or description of the race's varying parcours in which each chapter heading seems suffixed with the term 'berg' (kruisberg, knoteberg, koppenberg, bosberg, etc., etc.). cleverly, a blow by strategic blow of the 2011 race is threaded throughout each chapter, culminating in the last few tense kilometres in the final pages. this comprises not a simple, superficial narrative, but one that provides an in-depth examination of the day's events played out across the innumerable bergs. many of these insights have been gleaned from rider interviews, several of which we are party to in the course of the book, many from pickering's own repeated watchings of the race.

"Behind, Flecha attacks, countered by Boonen. Scheirlinckx sees them go and hesitates, immediately kicking himself - if he'd followed, fifth place was realistic. Perhaps even higher, if the front trio slowed. Boonen is policing Flecha - he won't work, because his team-mate Chavanel is ahead, but fatally he doesn't even realise there's a gap behind him."

even though the author's opening words are "This is the story of a bike race" (true, in every sense of that phrase) the Ronde van Vlaanderen is more than that: "To think of the Tour of Flanders as only a sporting event is to miss its wider significance. The Ronde is the expression of an entire culture, its geography, landscape, people, society, meteorology, politics and self-image." if that seems just a bit too much like lame authorial rhetoric, its appearance on page eight is subsequently reinforced by a narrative and extensive research that, by the book's end, is not only more than justified, but almost seems an inadequate description.

aside from offering a brief recap of the event's history, ed pickering later delivers a chapter of thirteen and a half pages, detailing a history of the region through its myriad twists and turns of political change that is worthy of the cover price alone. and yet, despite the book's stunningly comprehensive analysis and insight into one of cycling's greatest events, mr pickering has the skill never to overburden the reader with his approach to storytelling. the eighteen chapters are superbly written, well presented and compulsive to the last.

it is but a simple matter of looking up the results of the 2011 ronde van vlaanderen on the internet; we know who won. but the way the race is portrayed in the book, i was still leaning forward in my chair to the last, having been provided with more atmosphere than eurosport will ever command, en-route to the finish line.

superb.

"Echt Flandriens rijden op kasseien!" (Real Flandriens ride on cobbles.)

wednesday 7 march 2018

twmp ..........................................................................................................................................................................................................