Jules de Bruycker’s paintings of Ghent are full of life and vibrant action, showing the teeming life of the Flandrien city as it was in the early 20th century. There’s something going on wherever you look, like his fellow painters Pieter Bruegel and Hieronymus Bosch had portrayed centuries earlier. You can’t take your eyes off the scenes of everyday life.
Similarly, I can’t take my eyes off the colourful, chaotic action of the Classics, which begin this weekend with Omloop Nieuwsblad and Opening Weekend. The scenes which De Bruycker painted a century ago are close to where Omloop begins on Saturday; the race rolls out of ‘t Kuipke, metres away from MSK Gent, where a retrospective on the artist was held last March.
News editor at Cycling Weekly, Adam brings his weekly opinion on the goings on at the upper echelons of our sport. This piece is part of The Leadout, a newsletter series from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here. As ever, email adam.becket@futurenet.com – should you wish to add anything, or suggest a topic.
Opening Weekend is no longer the start of the cycling season, whichever way you look at it. The Tour Down Under was well over a month ago, and the UAE Tour has come and gone, along with tens of other stage races and early-season one-day events. All of this is ‘real’ racing, with story lines, winners, and UCI points on the line. We have already had time to see Remco Evenepoel be declared the rider to watch, and then fail to match the hype at another race. All the men’s teams apart from EF Education-EasyPost and Picnic PostNL have won already, while Visma-Lease a Bike have had time to go through a little existential wobble.
However, Opening Weekend and Omloop is the start of the racing that you can’t miss, that you cannot gloss over by reading a round-up here, or some highlights there. If you love racing, as hopefully you do, then the Classics are essential viewing. There is just something about the sight of bikes bouncing over the cobbles of the Muur van Geraardsbergen or the Molenberg, the sprint into the corners, the shouts and the escapes, which bring our sport to life.
The Alley at the Patershol in Ghent, 1910, by Jules de Bruycker
(Image credit: MSK Gent)
Perhaps I’m just close-minded, but I remember past editions of races like Omloop in a way that I can’t recall performances at the Volta ao Algarve or Setmana Valenciana. This is no snub or criticism of them; it is perfectly natural that some events mean more. There’s a food chain, even within the Classics – you couldn’t convincingly argue that Omloop is a bigger deal than the Tour of Flanders, for example.
I also love Opening Weekend for what it heralds: the European spring. I know cycling is an international sport, but I’m sitting in south-west England dreaming of the sun and warmer days. Omloop is followed by Paris-Nice – literally nicknamed ‘the Race to the Sun’ – then by Milan-San Remo, and before we know it May and the Giro d’Italia are here. We’re into the meat of the season, and we should really savour it.
It is hard to predict anything about Omloop. You can look at the start list and say Demi Vollering, Lorena Wiebes or Tom Pidcock should be winning, but last year, Lotte Claes won the women’s race from a breakaway which lasted until the finish, and Søren Wærenskjold beat the bigger names at the men’s race as it finished in a bunch sprint.
That’s where the excitement comes from in our sport, the mayhem that is thrown in when cobbles, distance, and wild weather mix together. Just like one of De Bruycker’s paintings, the reality of how brutal racing can be is seen at the Classics. Cycling looks as hard as we know it all is, and that’s beautiful, too.
This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.
If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.
Explore More
