There is a real sense of anticipation, plus a whiff of fear, before the first Belgian classic of the year. It was, if anything, more intense at last Saturday’s Omloop Het Volk. The season was already well-underway, but having toured the world in search of good roads and early season sunshine the peloton was returning to the crucible of European bike racing, where ambition and danger are as raw as a Belgian steak pave.
This year’s 63rd edition had a new start and finish in the centre of Ghent (the race is also known as Gent-Gent) and a redesigned course on smaller roads with helling (hill) number 11, the Molenberg sited much closer to the finish than before, at 37km to go.
Ghent on a Saturday morning is a pretty relaxed place, the locals over here treat weekends in a more laid-back way than we do and the crowds strolling around the new start point at t’Kuipke velodrome are happy to hang around the team buses and get an autograph or photo from pretty much anyone on two wheels.
I park the motorbike on the edge of the crowds, facing the road which the race will use to exit the stadium park. It has a tank bag and panniers full of camera stuff, a race radio and wet weather clothing, but it’s okay to wander off as the ambience is totally safe.
Over at the Astana bus Sean Yates stands guard over the white and blue Trek bikes which are a bit too precious and lovely to abandon. He’s still tired from the day before, when he spent seven hours driving the full 199km route to familiarise himself with the revisions made by former three-times race winner Peter Van Petegem.
Team leader Tomas Vaitkus is too ill to start he tells me, the doctor signed him off the
previous night. But Vaitkus starts anyway, having told Yates that he had trained too hard to
miss this race.
Most teams have trained on the course in the week. They may be jet-lagged and off-form but Quick Step leaders Tom Boonen and Paulo Bettini are on the start list because anything other would be absurd; this is Het Volk and, like Vaitkus, crying off is not an option.
And they go hard, from the gun. With a strong tailwind the speed is well over 30mph as riders from lesser teams become detached from the strung out bunch of 199 riders. We are just cruising along at the back, the three cylinder 995i motor of the Triumph spinning at a leisurely 3-4,000 revs, but as another shelled rider comes alongside his face tells the real story, mouth gaping open and eyes locked despairingly on the receding wheel of the bike in front, this is no place for the weak, the sick or injured.
We stay at the back to grab shots of crashes, riders going back to team cars and overhead views of splits and echelons which are taken with the bike in the centre of the road with the photographer standing up and leaning against the back of the driver. Constant changes of direction from big roads to small ones and criss-crossing fields and valleys on lanes little more than a car width wide, is a feature of all races held in Flanders. Throw in bollards and posts, speed humps and chicanes in built-up areas, parked cars and cobbles and crashes are inevitable and frequent.
A wave will spasm through the bunch and a second later there is a crashed rider lying on his back, legs in the air, in the middle of the road. We brake, try and id the guy and grab a shot while carving past him. If it’s a big name you may stop, always in front of the rider but on the verge, to allow the photographer to get off and take more shots. Even when the bunch slows right down to take a tight turn in town the danger of a hitting a post or kerb is ever present and we see another two clatter to the ground early on.
Other crashes we saw included a mass pile-up on a stretch of cobbles which brought down nearly 30 riders, and a totally unexpected high speed wash-out on a downhill stretch of dry cobbles, possibly Haussler, who slid across the blocks on his backside just as we made a passing move on his small group late in the race.
I am feeling a bit jumpy during these early kilometres as this is my first event of the year and have not ridden in a bike race since the Tour of Ireland last August. I’m not used to sitting a metre behind the motorbike in front nor how close the team and official cars come to the bike as they move up and down the right hand side of the road. My new speaker and amplifier system (thanks Robert!) also takes some getting used to – there’s a lot of distracting and quite loud white noise.
But once we start to move around the back of the pleoton for side-on shots, and I relax a bit, a sense of familiarity returns and I begin to tune in to the important stuff, and filter out the distractions. The brake light flashes less as the realisation kicks in that that this is a Flemish bike race with no intention of stopping until we return to Ghent in about five hours time. There will be riders crashing left, right and centre, jumping onto adjacent bike paths and pavements and filtering through stopped cars at bottlenecks, but only a train at a level crossing can stop these nutters – and not for long either.
I am getting used to the extra weight on the back and a lighter feeling from the front end. The Triumph’s long travel suspension is soft and is a lot comfier than my BMW over speed humps, cobbles and sharp ridges in the road. It’s much better for these races, especially when we get a rare chance to shoot from the bike on a couple of cobbled sections. Ten years ago it was a free-for-all on the cobbles but these days the moto photographers have to park up and shoot on the cobbled climbs and flat sections. But when the race splits to pieces and the officials are scattered you can occasionally sneak in and get some action pics from the bike.
The Triumph gear change is notchy but auto-smooth under load if you just dip the clutch and it’s fast, quicker than the BMW K75 and great for passing long lines of riders on wide roads before you get cut off by a roundabout or sharp turn. A fast bike is great but hooning around is not what we are here for and I try to accelerate more progressively later in the race to give the photographer an easier ride. He is at the office, trying to get the job done as stress-free as possible and is not interested in my bike’s 0-60 time.
Part 2 later!