Ronde Van Vlaanderen Week: Hallelujiah!

Getting old(er) is all about things changing, and not.

I’ve told my cycling fan origin story a few times, about how my friend Steve popped the TV on to the 1985 American TV broadcast of Paris-Roubaix, which probably happened earlier that day or week, and I found my brain arrested by images of people mud-wrestling on skinny bikes in incredibly dramatic fashion. It was a short walk from there to the 1985 Tour, especially since many of the protagonists rode both, but anyway that was an era when a foreigner could have an easy time developing a new connection to this crazy sport. It was LeMond and Hinault and Kelly and Fignon (and Madiot) and some seriously sensationalized coverage on American TV, as well as around Europe.

But that didn’t make me a Flanders fan, per se. Flanders wasn’t shown and barely even mentioned in the coverage somewhere. I suppose Paris-Roubaix teed up my future interest in races with cobblestones, but that’s about it.

Honestly, I don’t really know what triggered my Flanders obsession, some combination of churches and cobbled hills and gloomy weather, all of which I love for some reason. It just seeped in over time, particularly in the early Aughts when George Hincapie, Tom Boonen and Fabian Cancellara were waging war around the region. It was, and is, a gloriously aesthetic event, pumped up by its legions of fans from all walks of Belgian life, and I don’t really have any regrets about my own excitement reaching levels in around 2010 that resemble Tom Cruise from jumping up and down on Oprah’s couch. I do feel a little sheepish about doing that (I think typically American) thing of getting a little too excited about things happening outside the US before you even know what they are? But hey, at least I know how to pick ‘em.

Photo by Tim De Waele/Getty Images

Roughly two decades later, my love of Flanders and the races which showcase the region is very different. Of course, the races themselves are very different, and I have mixed feelings about all that. They seem more commodified, especially Gent-Wevelgem, which has been marketed as a World War I remembrance that is both too much and not enough. Too much…