Early in the year, and in unfashionable parts of Northern Europe, is where you’ll find the season’s very best racing. Forget the Tour and the Giro, the Spring Classics are the last undiluted remnant of cycling’s glorious past. A series of one-day races, loosely associated by location, tradition, or the style of their courses. For in-the-know fans, they often represent bike racing in its entirety.
Their epicentre is the Belgian region of Flanders, an area so flat you’d be forgiven for imagining it a cycling dead zone. Instead, the exact opposite is true.
‘Belgians and especially the Flemish live and breathe cycling,’ explains Scott Sunderland, race director at the prestigious Flanders Classics series.
‘They get it, and I mean they get all of it. Belgium itself is a small country,…
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Bikes Etc (Digital) - 1 Issue, May 2019