The Whimsical Guide to Gent-Wevelgem (and other races)
Revisiting The Lionel of Flanders series
by Lionel Birnie
It was early spring 2017 and I’d just returned from my umpteenth Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. For the second year in a row, Greg Van Avermaet had beaten Peter Sagan to win the race – and that wasn’t the only thing that gave me a sense of déjà-vu. Everything felt a bit too familiar. I found myself gravitating towards the same climbs and stretches as cobbles as I had before. I had dinner in the same restaurants, ordered the same beers. None of that was necessarily a bad thing, but I had realised I was heading to Flanders to experience things I’d experienced before rather than searching for anything new. I had a sense that I needed to find a new way to cover familiar races in familiar places.
Over the next couple of weeks I started to formulate an idea. How about I tell the story of the three races that build up to The Big One, the Tour of Flanders? Back then, Dwars Door Vlaanderen, the Grand Prix E3 Harelbeke and Gent-Wevelgem took place on the Wednesday, Friday and Sunday a week before the Ronde Van Vlaanderen. On the days in between, I’d go cycling, to explore some of the famous stretches of road within riding distance of our base.
And, instead of recording it all and making an episode when we got home, we’d release it like a mini stage race, with episodes going out each morning for five consecutive days. It would, we hoped, echo our grand tour coverage and tap into the sense of bubbling excitement and momentum that led towards the Tour of Flanders.
I called our producer, Tom Whalley, and ran the idea past him. He loved it and signed off by saying: ‘If you don’t call it The Lionel of Flanders you might as well not even bother going!’
Trailer: The Lionel of Flanders
Stage one – Dwars Door Vlaanderen
Simon Gill – or Simon The Photographer, to give him his proper name – joined me for the trip and we set off for Kortrijk the day before Dwars Door Vlaanderen. To save a bit of money, I’d booked two rooms aboard the Bootel Ahoi, a barge converted into a floating hotel moored on the River Leie. Once we’d checked in, we drove to Roeselare to collect our accreditation for the following day’s race. The sports directors were just leaving the official pre-race briefing and I grabbed a quick word with Quick Step’s Tom Steels, who had won Dwars Door Vlaanderen in 1998 and he described the character of the week’s three races.
Dwars Door Vlaanderen suited sprinters, or more specifically sprinters who could climb a bit. E3 Harelbeke was, Steels said, ‘the Tour of Flanders’ little brother’, and Gent-Wevelgem was traditionally all about the Kemmelberg but was about to enter new territory, taking in the Plugstreets – gravel roads criss-crossing the First World War battlefields – for the first time.
We left Simon’s Broomwagon in Roeselare and rode back to Kortrijk, arriving in time for a pre-dinner drink in a bar where the most prominent customers were cats who had the run of the place. One hopped up onto the bar and looked as if it was waiting to be served – presumably it was after a Trappist beer called Mont des Cats.
Next day, we rode back to Roeselare, then headed to the finish in Waregem where I explored a link between cycling and football. Zulte Waregem’s stadium, the Regenboogstadion, was built to host the finish of the 1957 World Championship road race – won by Rik Van Steenbergen – and its name translates as ‘Rainbow Stadium’. We also made a detour on the bikes to the Nokereberg, one of the early climbs in the race, but perhaps more familiar as the cobbled hill that welcomes the finish of the Nokere Koerse, one of the warm-up races for the warm-up races.
Then we headed to a stretch of cobbles that ducked off the main road into the woods, took a right-angled turn and rejoined the same main road 600 metres or so further along.
So typically Flandrian.
As was the race winner, Yves Lampaert, whose surname may lack Cees and Exes but which could almost be a Flandrian exclamation or swear word.
“Oof, Lampaert.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’ve run out of energy bars.”
The following day, Lampaert was pictured sitting in the cab of a John Deere tractor. It later turned out he logged his rides on Strava using the name ‘John Deere’ and he still helped out on his parents’ farm a couple of days a week.
Mitch Docker was in the break and finished ninth. I wonder whatever became of him…?
Stage two – The road to Roubaix
We had breakfast aboard the boat after a restful night gently bobbing on the water. The first episode hit the airwaves and, with Photoshop skills the current Princess of Wales would be proud of, our Head of Winning Behaviours, Jonathan Rowe had created a promotional image for social media by superimposing my face under the flowing mane of Peter Sagan. To say the effect was disconcerting was an understatement. It took me all morning to shake it.
Simon and I got on the road to ride to Roubaix and the André Pétrieux velodrome. We took a back road, the Rue du Dronckaert, and as we crossed the border from Belgium to France I slowed to a stop. On this anonymous stretch of road the course of cycling history turned. It’s where police stopped a Festina team car on its way to the grand départ of the 1998 Tour de France in Dublin. Officers made the driver, a team soigneur called Willy Voet, open the boot and inside were enough drugs to stock a hospital pharmacy. We stood for a few minutes as I retold the story and tried to visualise what had happened that dawn 21 Julys earlier. It was the end of cycling’s age of innocence, or perhaps that should be suspended disbelief?
When we arrived in Roubaix, the gates to the velodrome were open so we swept inside and treated ourselves to a few laps. It wasn’t my first time on the old concrete track but I was once again surprised how rough and lifeless the surface felt under my tyres. Painful memories of riding round at the end of the 260-kilometre sportive came flooding back. Then I headed to the famous showers, managed to persuade someone to unlock the door, and I clacked around inside for a few minutes. Roubaix may be in France but its heart is definitely Flandrian.
Stage three – Harelbeke
The most conventional day, when we gave a passable impression of a reporter and photographer covering a bike race. We went to the start where I interviewed riders and Simon took pictures. Then we headed off into the countryside to see the race in multiple locations before arriving at the Oude Kwaremont, where I met up with Harry Pearson, a journalist who shares my love of obscure football and Flandrian cycling. He also bears an uncanny resemblance to two-time Tour of Flanders winner Edwig Van Hooydonck, uncle of Nathan. Harry had spent some time living in Belgium and had written a book called A Tall Man In A Low Land in the 1990s. He was now immersing himself in Flandrian culture for another book, which ended up being The Beast, the Emperor and the Milkman, which had the sub-title A bone-shaking tour through cycling’s Flemish heartlands.
Harry and I had a chat that would form half of our fourth episode, then Simon and I headed to one of the more famous chip vans for a hearty plate of Flemish stew and chips that would never have won a prize for presentation but did brilliantly on both taste and value for money.
In the evening, we met up with Edward Pickering, my former colleague from Cycle Sport magazine, then editor of Procycling, and author of De Ronde, a book which delves beneath the surface to explore the links between the race and the place.
His eyelid was still twitching having spent the day driving another photographer across Flanders trying – and succeeding – to see the race a mind-boggling number of times.
We decided to record our chat for the podcast over a post-dinner drink but, it being Friday night, everywhere was incredibly busy and very loud. We ended up walking across town to a trendy studenty bar with an outside space that, I must admit, had a bit of a Lord of the Flies vibe. It felt like civilisation might break down at any moment and – I may be mistaken about this because Belgian beers can be incredibly strong – but I’m pretty sure there were some young people dancing around a fire in the courtyard at some point. (I’ve gone in search of this bar on every subsequent trip to Kortrijk but, like the cat bar, have never found it. Perhaps it was all a fever dream sparked by fatigue, Flemish stew and Orval?)
Ed’s contribution was brilliant but on getting back to the boat I listened back to the audio realised that I’d had the recorder on the wrong settings and the sound was a bit distorted. It was still usable but I was kicking myself – not easy to do in the cramped cabin-style bedroom – although our producer that night did wonders by polishing the slightly Dalek-y edge off our voices just enough.
Stage four – Literary Flanders
We drove to Wevelgem to ride the Plugstreets and the Kemmelberg, recording material for the fifth and final episode. We stopped for a coffee in a bar decked out in memorabilia dedicated to the late Frank Vandenbroucke, who was born in nearby Moescron (which is actually in Wallonia, not Flanders), but grew up in Ploegsteert. There was a Belgian national team jersey he’d worn in a junior World Championships, which looked impossibly small, a few trophies and photographs. It was impossible not to feel sad that Vandenbroucke – who was cycling royalty in Belgium – died young and troubled. As was one of the victims of a sport that had involved trafficking drugs across borders he was one of the ones who paid the highest price.
As we reached the Plugstreets, suddenly we were surrounded by cyclists. They must’ve known we were coming. Actually, we’d stumbled upon the Gent-Wevelgem sportive and after we’d stopped to consider the weft and warp of the gravel we settled into the slipstream and inadvertently followed the wheels to their organised feed stop, where I inadvertently found myself tucking in to some delicious fruit tarts and inadvertently filled my bidons with some free energy drink. On our way out of the feed zone we passed the beautiful, sombre, imposing Ploegsteert memorial, which commemorates more than 11,000 mostly British and South African soldiers who died in the First World War and had no known grave.
After that, we rode on in contemplative silence for a bit until we got to the Kemmelberg, where we clattered over the cobbles and whizzed down the descent before riding on to Ypres for a snack and a large Leffe, then rolled through the Menen Gates on our way back to Wevelgem.
In the evening, we had dinner at a place in Kortrijk that did great steak but my memory is that I managed to get into a Twitter spat over a bit of well-meaning criticism from a listener. I think it was related to the slightly sub-par audio quality on that day’s episode. Either that or it was someone correcting something I’d said, or taking issue with the way I’d said it. All of those things are possible and the fact I can remember the ‘argument’ (and my cheeks are flushing red with a sense of embarrassment as I write this now) but can’t remember what it was actually about proves that I should definitely have let it go. Anyway, we’ve all been there at some point or other – particularly at the height of social media’s grip on our thoughts and emotions, especially when away from home immersed in a job that’s going both brilliantly and terribly at the same time. But I regret losing the best part of an evening trying to win an un-winnable argument while Simon ate his steak alone – metaphorically-speaking, anyway.
Stage five – In Flanders Fields
Adding a loop to take in several sections of gravel track gave another dimension to Gent-Wevelgem. Previously its DNA was crosswinds, echelons and cobblestones – all elements that survived the 2017 re-imagining – but adding the Plugstreets (so called because that’s apparently how the British soldiers pronounced the nearby village of Ploegsteert) gave the race something else, as well as honouring the history of the surrounding landscape.
We headed to the longest section of gravel, where a marquee had been put up for VIPs. A group of people in First World War-style uniforms played an impromptu football match, re-enacting the Christmas Truce football match said to have taken place near Messines on Christmas Day 1914 when German and British soldiers stopped firing and climbed out of the trenches to kick a ball about in No Man’s Land.
I had asked Colin Mace, an actor, voice artist and friend of one of our producers Jon Moonie, to record In Flanders Fields, a poem written by Canadian soldier Lieutenant-Colonel John McCrae. He had recorded it brilliantly and I wanted to get the introduction right.
I typed a few notes on my phone and stood in a field and recorded take after take. It took at least a dozen goes to get it right. Sometimes it was because I wasn’t happy with my delivery, sometimes it was because of someone shouting out nearby, or a car beeping its horn as it passed. Eventually, I made my way back to Simon, who had wondered where I’d gone.
We watched the riders fly past to the sound of stray stones pinging off carbon-fibre wheel rims, then headed to the VIP tent to watch the rest of the race unfold on one of the big screens.
Greg Van Avermaet won in Wevelgem, as he had done in Harelbeke a couple of days earlier, as he had done in Gent at Omloop a month earlier, and would do again in the velodrome in Roubaix a couple of weeks later. It really was the Spring of Greg.
And despite the déjà-vu of seeing the same man win the races, I didn’t feel at all deflated or jaded. The trip had been a whirlwind.
Simon and I headed back to broomwagon, and slumped into the seats. There was a brief moment of silence before Simon turned the key in the ignition as a wave of fatigue swept over us. We headed back to Kortrijk for dinner and a well-earned beer.
As we pulled onto the main road, I glanced across at Simon and noticed for the first time the jumper he had on.
‘Have you been wearing that all day?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘As some sort of joke?’
‘No. Why?’ he asked, puzzled.
He was wearing a patterned, knitted jumper featuring a penguin wearing a woolly hat and scarf. A Christmas jumper.
‘So, you went to photograph a group of people re-enacting the famous Christmas Truce wartime football match…’ I paused for dramatic effect, ‘…wearing a comedy Christmas jumper?’
Simon looked horrified.
‘Oh no! I was packing in a hurry… it was the only one that was clean. You don’t think anyone was offended do you?’
‘Well, I mean, I doubt it but they might have wondered why you were wearing a Christmas jumper in March,’ I said.
The Lionel of Flanders was originally released in 2017 but we know listeners like to dust it off every spring. It’s available for Friends of the Podcast subscribers and the series was produced by Tom Whalley and Paul Scoins.
I have still got all the episodes saved on my Sony Player. Was unwell recently and listened to them, also the Tour d' Ecosse ones and the MSR ones from last year which were recently repeated.
Hope all is well with you and the family, Lionel. I do so miss you on TCP.
Very best wishes from Liz Miller
Been working my way through the Friends episodes and coincidentally have just gotten to The Lionel of Flanders series! Love the stories behind this!