We’re all a
little bit hard pressed for entertainment this year – not only is there no
cycling, there is no anything in the world of sports. We try to find other
entertainment: we play our races in a computer game, ride online group rides
with our favourite pro’s or have them race actual digital races. Us cycling
fanatics are often traditionalists, so we find entertainment in our sports vast
historical library more than anywhere else. But despite the despair, the Fleche
Wallonne is a race that even hashtag #ClassicClassics won’t touch.
I know the
arguments: the final climb, the Mur to end all Murs is so steep, so daunting
and yet so well known by now that every edition is a play-by-play repeat of the
previous one. A thinned out yet significant peloton reaches the foot of the
final ascent, boom, explosion, done. And
yet, I feel compelled to come to the defence of the middle child of the Ardennes
classics.
I’m
particularly fond of the La Fleche Feminine, the women’s edition. Without
exaggeration it can be said that the steep Mur has been the prime weathervane
of who the champion of any given era is. It was in 2007 that record holder
Marianne Vos took the first of her five wins and kickstarted her legendary
dominance in the sport. Five wins are equalled by Anna van der Breggen since
2015, including as part of an Ardennes triple crown in the first year this was
an option – because yes, while la Fleche Feminine has been around since the
late 90ies, the other Ardennes did not follow suit until 2017, while for
example Paris Roubaix is still lacking a women’s edition. In between Vos and
Van der Breggen was the year of Pauline Ferrand Prevot, and her triumph in Huy
in 2014 did much to cement the expectation for her to become the successor to Vos’s legacy. Only Annemiek van Vleuten, the most
dominant rider of the last two years, has not been able to translate that
strength into a victory on top the Mur – indeed, the Mur seems to be the place
where “the Alien”, dixit Elisa Longo Borgini, is on her most humanly beatable.
Can the
same be said of the men’s field? Perhaps less so. Men’s cycling has been
professionalised and specialised to a much farther extend for a far longer
time. And yet, one of the race’s earliest and most prolific winners, when the
race itself was still mostly a Belgian affair, was Marcel Kint. Kint went on to
win six Tour stages, a top 10 overall in the Tour de France, a Liege Bastogne
Liege, a Gent Wevelgem, a Paris Roubaix and the World Championships Road Race
in 1938. Seven years after Kint’s first
win, the heroic Fausto Coppi became only the second non-Belgian winner of the
race. More recently, the Fleche Wallonne became the emblem of the perfectionism
of ‘the Unbeatable’ Alejandro Valverde. No-one could time a final punch anywhere
as perfectly as Alejandro, and no punch he knew so closely as that specific one
in the Ardennes. For Valverde, perhaps,
the Mur de Huy wasn’t as much a weathervane of his rise, but rather one of his
demise. When after four consecutive wins he passed the baton to Julian Alaphillipe,
it send shockwaves through the cycling world. Age had finally caught up with
the undisputable king of the puncheurs. All hail the new king.
All of the
above, however, misses the point still. The main defence of La Fleche has
nothing to with its ability to produce champions nor its place in cycling
history. The point, above all, is that those who lambast the race on the Mur de
Huy fundamentally misunderstand what the race is. See, it’s undeniable that the Fleche Wallonne provides meagre
entertainment on the television screen, because that’s not what it’s for.
Instead, it is the ultimate race to watch roadside.
It’s the
long trip from home, whether over the Deutsche autobahn, through the gentler
northern Ardennes or from the French south, to Wallonia. It’s following the
Meuse through alternating idyllic and desolate industrial landscapes, to be
suddenly confronted with an imposing nuclear energy station, and then turning
again into the beautiful town of Huy itself. It’s coffee on the market square
and walking up and down the Mur –which surprises you with its steepness every
single time- before another coffee on the market square. It’s crawling up that
climb one more time, legs already tired this early in the morning, to find the
perfect place.
It’s the
perfect amount of crowds: crowded enough for a festive atmosphere, very crowded
indeed, but somehow just barely avoiding the suffocating claustrophobia of too crowded. It’s the children (of all
ages) cresting the beast of a climb for themselves, while retired pros in
anonymous outfits pretend they’re ten years younger again. It’s the police
officers gently nudging everyone aside. It’s the anticipation as the women’s
peloton is about to crest the climb for the first time, and again, and again. And
then the men.
It’s the
breakaway visibly struggling going up that hill. It’s hearing the announcers
proclaim a compact peloton at the foot, and yet see a completely scattered
field by the time they’ve reached your place about three quarters up that hill.
It’s even the favourites going by so slow that you can see every grimace on
their pained faces. It’s the procession of the defeated, the wounded, for what
feels like ages after. Torn shirts and torn flesh, prolonging their suffering because
the only rest is on the plateau op that hill.
It’s the
frites in a forlorn snackbar as all visitors slowly stream out of the French
town. It’s the long road home. Acclaimed writer John Foote said that in the heroic
age of cycling in Italy, the sport was intrinsically linked to the harsh
combination of industrialism and relative poverty – if that’s any measure, the
beating heart of heroics in Northern Europe has to be Wallonia – with the Mur
de Huy smack in the middle of it.
