Ladies and gentlemen, roll up, roll up! Open up those nostrils, take in that heady whiff of pommes frites, mayonnaise, triple-brewed beer and good old fashioned blood, sweat and tears. Let the Season of the Classics begin!
In days gone by, not too long ago, the professional racing season would be starting this weekend, more or less, with the mini-Classics Omloop Het Nieuwsblad (until 2008 known as Omloop Het Volk) on Saturday and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on Sunday.
The globalisation of the sport has led to the season starting earlier with the Tour Down Under and the tours of Qatar and Oman of course, yet, without meaning any disrespect, Omloop and the ensuing Classics still truly mark the beginning of the ‘biggies’.
Saturday’s opener and Sunday’s Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne race are both prestigious one day races in their own right, but among the Classics are five races that are classified, rather majestically (and rightfully so), as ‘Monuments’.
These are:
Milan-San Remo
The Tour of Flanders
Paris-Roubaix
Liege-Bastogne-Liege
Giro di Lombardia
The first four make up the great Spring Classics, the last, also known affectionately as ‘The Race of the Falling Leaves’, the great Autumn Classic.
Win one of these and you’ll never pay for a beer again in your hometown. These races make gods of mortals, legends of skinny-boned pedal pushers.
They also make famous otherwise non-descript towns, hamlets and hills, geographical locations that no one but cyclists and the local inhabitants would recognize.
Saturday’s race is a tough one, no doubt about it, featuring many of the climbs that the participants of the Tour of Flanders will face. Known by the old school as Gent-Gent, the race takes the peloton over 12 hills (known locally as ‘hellingen’), including the Valkenberg and the Molenberg, tough short hills that sap the power from the legs.
Just for good measure, there are cobbles thrown in too, and unsurprisingly the weather is often on the unfriendly side.
All that combines to make this a race that is usually won by a Belgian. Generally speaking, the Belgians are just proper hard bastards. Hard, scary men who never cry, eat puppies for brunch and sleep on broken glass for the tickles.
A whopping 80-odd percent of the winners have been Belgians, so unsurprisingly the favourites hail from there this time around too.
The 2012 winner Sep Vanmarcke of Blanco looks a possibility this time around, as does Tom Boonen. True, he’s been injured but if he’s lining up it means he’ll be in the mix. Nic Nuyens of Garmin-Sharp should be up there too.
Of the rest? Look to BMC trio Thor Hushovd, Taylor Phinney and Brent Bookwalter, Matt Goss (Orica-GreenEdge), Geraint Thomas (Sky), Lars Boom (Blanco) and Filippo Pozatto (Lampre-Merida) to be battling near the end too.
It takes that kind of rider to win here, someone with a lot of base power, a decent sprint but with the ability to grind up those sharp little growler hills.
Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne was won last season my then Sky Pro Cycling rider Mark Cavendish, and he’s back to defend his title this year.
This year he’ll be up against Boonen again, and fighting it out with others such as Goss, Tyler Farrar, Geert Steegmans and Niki Terpstra.
My pick? I’m backing Tom Boonen for tomorrow’s race. Injured or not, this is when ‘Tomeke’ shines. Going to go with John Degenkolb for Sundays Kuurne race. Not sure why on the latter, just a hunch!
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