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Omloop Het Nieuwsblad

— After a hard winter and a week of rain, we go roadside at the opening race of the 2010 Spring Classics season in professional road cycling.”

Cobbles of the Molenberg

Eighteen months have passed by since our last visit to the Muur van Geraardsbergen and today the cobbled hill is transformed.

Back then we had walked the deserted hill under the grey sky of a sullen summer afternoon. Today the Spring Classics season is beginning, the spectators are already two deep at the roadside and the sun is threatening to make an appearance.

Roadside at the Muur

All around us on this the steepest section of the Muur, we hear the affable burr of some rustic version of Flemish. We’re comfortably anonymous as English speakers while opposite a small group of francophones gets a few raised eyebrows.

We arrived about an hour in advance of the race – the 2010 edition of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad – and following some sagely advice from the Cyclingnews.com forum, we parked the car on Pachtersstraat near the Gouden Jezus statue and climbed an alleyway to join the Muur at the first corner.

It’s a long time to stand and wait when there’s a nip in the air, but the amateur cyclists passing by present a good opportunity to test camera settings. Today, despite the occasional glimpses of sun through thick cloud, the light is rather poor.

Everyone here knows when the race is due and the anticipation grows with each successive race car or motorbike, each urgently sounding the horn as it passes by.

There’s usually a brief, electric silence at this point but here the Flemish fans chatter on excitedly. Soon after, we see the pointing gestures of those who’ve picked up the sound of an approaching helicopter a few moments before the rest of us.

Another rush of motorbikes and cars, each with its own function in today’s race, and down on the corner the crowd burst into a funk of cheers and shouts.

Four riders emerge from the blur of colour and dig deep to hold their rhythm as the Muur unveils the ugly surprise of its harsh gradient. Thousands of eyes follow the struggling shapes up the hill and around the corner out of sight. There’s no Kapelmuur today, so their toil is almost over now the Brasserie ‘t Hemelrijck comes into view.

Below us now, the crowd erupts in another volley of noise and the whole peloton rounds the corner, sweeping into my viewfinder like a tidal wave.

The day’s eventual winner Juan Antonio Flecha leads the charge, his cadence uninterrupted as he stands on the pedals and stays low over the handlebars. Others grab at the tops of their hoods, struggling to find their own space in which to suffer.

Here at the Muur we’re watching the gloves come off.

Roadside at the Molenberg

Flemish cycling celebrates the Muur as a monument and maintains it accordingly. The Molenberg is celebrated because it is so unmaintained.

We hurried from Geraardsbergen through the feed station of tomorrow’s Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, then beyond Brakel and Sint-Blasius-Boekel to the hamlet of Korsele, parking beside the church with about 25 minutes to spare before the Omloop was scheduled to arrive.

Parking was very difficult and I had almost begun to regret stopping in Nederbrakel to photograph the famous Rondplein. We did the walk from Korsele back down to the Molenberg at double time, finding once we got there that a throng of cars, cyclists and pedestrians had gathered in a sort of excited panic.

Police officers were still anxiously clearing the Smarre road when the first race cars arrived. Over the little bridge with the watermill after which the Molenberg is named, we hit the slopes and decided to stop just around the first steep corner where the houses end.

It had rained all week and here the cobbles were sharp and roughly laid like bad dental work. Between the stones there were deep ruts from snared wheels. One older, immaculately turned out spectator struggled past our perch on his bike, applauded by Flemish fans anxious to encourage anything on two wheels. A couple of bike lengths on, where the cobbles were even worse, the gentleman was left sprawling in the mud.

Many of the professionals fared little better. In pursuit of the few weary leaders, Tom Boonen tore up the climb twice as fast as anyone else, making it look too easy. Flecha, Haussler and Gilbert gritted their teeth on his wheel. Further behind, the gears were getting lower and Wesley Sulzberger showed the signs of some nasty injuries.

The inevitable bottlenecks began as team cars tried to keep pace with the front groups without running down their stragglers, some of whom were wobbling. Russell Downing passed by, a long, long way from home and the town centre criteriums of last year. The traffic jam aside, he looked to be coping well enough.

In the end it was Downing’s teammate Flecha who won the day after so many years of runner-up prizes. The winner of the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad need not necessarily be the fastest or the wisest rider in the field. He needs only to be the hardest and the luckiest.

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Omloop Het Nieuwsblad

At the roadside for the traditional first race of the 2010 Spring Classics season.