At last! It is the Opening Weekend not only for Belgium, but really the whole cycling world. In Belgium, last weekend the long winter of cyclocross officially wrapped up with the final races, and now the Road Season can immediately begin. This last weekend of February is called Opening Weekend for the Belgians, because by law they are not allowed to hold a Road Race before Omloop Het Nieuwsbald—after this weekend, any sort of racing from tiny village kermesses to prestigious Monuments will take place on their soil on more days than not until the Fall comes once more. But it is also the Opening Weekend for the rest of the cycling world, because now the season really starts. We have had many races already in the Southern Hemisphere, Middle East, and the tolerable parts of the Mediterranean: riders have gotten their seasons started right, some Australians and South Americans and Spaniards have already dazzled the home crowds, and many have gotten back into the swing of racing. Now it is time for the Classics men to come out to play, because on this Opening of Weekends is when the Spring Classics—the first massive objectives of the season—begin.
For the true fans: ideally this weekend always has some brutally harsh weather—no matter how sadistic that sounds, it is the truth. There is something special about cozying up near a fire in a blanket on a Saturday afternoon to watch the Finale of Omloop. For Americans like myself sometimes I am tempted to just place the laptop near my bedside the night before, and come morning I simply log onto the stream and begin watching Live without even getting out of bed. This idea is not appealing for all the races on the calendar: certainly not in the Grand Tours, nor even in many of the other Spring Classics. But for this Weekend, this Opening Weekend, the elements should be an essential element in the viewing. It should look so cold and rainy out on those wet Belgian roads and cobbles that for this weekend at least we do not wish to be in the race or even on the roadside—curled up under the covers is the ideal place to be watching while these tougher hardmen make their Classics debut for the season. Yes, though Opening Weekend means Road Racing is back in Belgium, winter should not go down without a fight. Yes, yes, let the Winter Warlocks give us and the racers a great shock to the system: remind or teach the riders how to properly layer for a race, let only the toughest men be in for a shout to win, heighten the stakes of the racing with the bad weather so that it will be a memorable victory with hundreds of war stories to tell afterwards.
But enough of sadistic musings on biblical weather, let us properly lay out the weekend itself. On the last Saturday of February takes place the Belgian Cobbled Classic Omloop Het Nieuwsbald, on the Sunday its twin Cobbled Classic Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne (KBK). In recent decades, the races have markedly grown in prestige though both have been around since the end of World War II. One reason for this increase in status must be the expansion of the early season calendar in January and February. With all the warm weather racing and training in the Southern Hemisphere these Spring Classics riders are now already pinging on good form for this Opening Weekend. And why shouldn’t they be? It takes a special breed of rider to win a Cobbled Classic, and there are only eight real traditional Cobbled Classics of high prestige, thus only eight real opportunities to win. So if two of the eight are on this weekend, surely a large percentage of the riders want to make the most of the double-chance, and the rest here to race want to re-find their special Cobbled Classics legs for the later objectives. Another reason I speculate for the growth in prestige of this Weekend is that Omloop Het Nieuwsbald is the Cobbled Classic that is most akin to the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, the Tour of Flanders, itself.
Yes, there are the eight Cobbled Classics that all the World Tour teams attend: Omloop Het Nieuwsbald, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, E3, Gent-Wevelgem, Dwars door Vlaanderen, the Ronde Van Vlaanderen (“Tour of Flanders”), Scheldprijs, and Paris-Roubaix. The two biggest are of course the Ronde (Flanders) and Roubaix for these two are Monuments—the highest class a one-day race can be; the others are all Classics—the class below the monuments. What makes a Classic a Classic is an imprecise science and deserves a whole piece of its own; the races themselves have evolved over the years, but surely at this point all of these are proper Classics. Roubaix is its own special wild beast, and in recent years I am not sure how much of a factor the cobbles have been in Scheldprijs, for that race is always won by a pure sprinter; but those two aside, the rest of these races are similar.
They are raced in generally the same area of Belgium—Flanders more specifically—and they reuse many of the same famous roads and climbs in the area—the Oude Kwaremont, the Taaienberg, the Koppenberg, and the Paterberg among others. Perhaps if you have a studly knowledge of European geography and little knowledge of bike racing, you believe you know Flanders to be a flat area. Flanders comprises the top half of the country of Belgium, and it is true that Flanders is much flatter than Wallonia—Belgium’s Southern half—where the Ardennes Classics take place. But if you say Flanders is pancake flat, that is a misstep and reveals you have never watched a Flandrien Cobbled Classic. Sure, it is difficult to find many hills longer than 1 kilometer in length, and the heightens they reach are peanuts compared to the mountain passes of Colombia, but despite their short length Flanders has some very steep climbs. When I say steep, O! I speak leg-breaking and energy sapping climbs over 10% in gradient with difficult max gradients well over 15% and even 20%…and the worst part: these climbs are on cobbles. Cobbles so bouncy and slick on many of them, even on the 20% sections, you must ride seated in order to have enough traction for your back wheel not to slide out. These cobbled sections—and many of the Flemish lanes—are all notoriously narrow, and thus positioning is all important: You must be at the front. You must not be caught behind a less competent rider who cannot ride the steepest and most difficult parts. It is not uncommon for many pro-riders to lose all momentum from the difficulty or just because too many riders are bunched up in front of them, and thus they put one foot down or even crash. Yes, many of these climbs are so steep that if you lose momentum or stop, there’s no starting up again until you walk to the top. So in addition to the climbs being brutal themselves, the kilometers leading up to the climbs themselves are ferocious fighting affairs as all the teams want to get their top riders to the front for the most famous climbs. To be in a good position throughout the race does not mean you will have success, but surely it is a prerequisite for any success at all. On these famous climbs—occasionally you shall hear them referred to as “bergs”—the cream of the crop rises to the top and groups of leaders and chasers form. A group of fifteen riders, containing two or three of the race favorites, find separation on one of the climbs early in the race, because one of the riders in the 16th or 20th position crashes on the climb, this causes the rest of the peloton to halt and maneuver around the fallen rider; all of a sudden that group of fifteen has a minute gap, and the peloton spends the rest of the race chasing them down. Yes, these cobbled races often produce the most dynamic racing of the year: it is a true test of strategy amidst unprecedented levels of uncontrollable adversity. And then in the Finales of these Classics, after the pelotons and chasing groups have been whittled down to just the top men, these great ones go head-to-head: testing and attacking each other on these most famous bergs of Flanders, proving who is not only the strongest rider but also who has the best combination of strength and cunning. Yes, these are the races we look forward to most in the Spring: they are chaos on wheels, and yet every time someone must rise above to win.
Thus Omloop Het Nieuwsbald is a big objective for it is sometimes even considered a “mini-Tour of Flanders.” The real Tour of Flanders, the Ronde Van Vlaanderen, is 250 km—one of the features that usually separates a Monument from the Classics is its length—whereas Omloop is only about 200 km. But where the steep little bergs and cobbles come, it is more intense here at Omloop than at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne the next day. At KBK, the biggest climbs and cobbles come midrace and there is a flat finale—thus, potentially, the sprinters have a shot. This is not the case at Omloop Het Nieuwsbald or the Tour of Flanders, these races are too hard for a sprinter to win. Over the course of the race, the field gets so whittled down, you must be one of the strongest men over the steep climbs to have a shot. Yes, some of the men who are best at this actually can turn out to be fine sprinters, and most have some sort of element of speed, but they truly are their own special kind of rider to be able to fly up steep little cobbled climbs like these—and yet also endure all the grueling and harrowing challenges across the whole route. To win a race like Omloop, you need to have great endurance, Beowulfian power, tactical prowess, superb bike-handling skills, and speed in case the race ends in a three or four man-sprint. Yes, perhaps the Crosswinds do not often ravage Omloop Het Nieuwsbald, that is traditionally the job of the harsh cold weather and the many climbs themselves. In recent years, Omloop has even taken-over the Old traditional Flanders Finale hitting the riders with last tests up Muur van Geraardsbergen and the final-stinging Bosberg after that. Yes, the Muur van Geraardsbergen is the most famous of Flanders climbs, it is the one that goes up to that iconic Chapel—perhaps you know it as the Kapelmuur. And yes, it was such a controversial decision when the Tour of Flanders decided to remove it from the Finale of its route, but now it has a new home at the mini-Tour of Flanders, Omloop Het Nieuwsbald. Yes, to win at Omloop surely means you are on flying form, and your season is already made…the only question or danger that arises: are you flying high too early? Never have Omloop Het Nieuwsbald and the Tour of Flanders both been won by the same rider in the same season. Though these races are only six weeks apart, traditional wisdom says that is too long to hold a peak of highest form. Thus some of the highest favorites for the Monuments of Flanders and Roubaix skip this Opening Weekend to keep their proverbial powder dry. But luckily others do not and Omloop always proves to be a good race and has a worthy champion, whoever wins Omloop will be in the discussion of favorites for the rest of the Cobbled Classics.
Meanwhile, the next day is Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. No, nowadays it does not quite live up to its name: though it usually starts and finishes around Kuurne, it will at best only make it to the outskirts of Brussels midway through the race. But it is of little matter, what matters is what Cobbled Climbs it too shall hit. The answer is not as many as Omloop Het Nieuwsbald. Historically this race could often end in a bunch sprint of 100 riders won by a pure sprinter who had the endurance or strong team support to make it over the cobbles and climbs, and then mop up any strong Classics men in the breakaways. Perhaps that reality of this race can make it seem or feel a bit “flat”—pun intended—compared to the “mini-Tour of Flanders” the day before at Omloop. Yes, in some years this is the case and that is the way it goes; but that does not mean it is bad viewing nor the end of the world, and with developments to the early season calendar this is becoming the reality less and less often. In recent years, the Middle Eastern races are attracting the strongest lineups of pure sprinters at this time of year. Why would the pure sprinters want to go to KBK to get their teeth kicked in over some of the cobbled climbs while freezing their fingers into black-frostbitten oblivion, when there are warm flat desert races in the Middle East begging to be won by them? Yes, it is an easy choice for the top sprinters to forgo their lesser chance of winning KBK for ample opportunities of sprint after sprint in the Middle East. Thus with the absence of most of the headline sprinters, very few teams try to hold the race together for the sprint. And, yes luckily, if few teams actively try to hold this race together it will not be held together over a challenging course like this. Yes, in recent years, this race has often come down to a sprint of less than ten men, even in recent years multiple solo escapists have found success holding off a reduced peloton behind. Do not be angry with me if the race does end in a bunch sprint, but with the headline sprinters in the Middle East and still the respectably difficult route of Cobbles and Climbs: there is a good shot it will not all come back together in the finale.
And thus Opening Weekend has been described. Hopefully you now better understand what is coming up, what you might be getting yourself into. All that is left now is to place our bets—make our picks of doom sure to go wrong—and then finally and of course watch the races themselves. And yes, yes, remember for this weekend at least we all root for bad weather for that really is an essential in a proper Belgian Opening Weekend.
Part of a Podcast Previewing and Predicting this year’s 2021 edition. Check out Cycling Odysseys wherever you get your podcasts.
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