The World of Cycling According to G by Geraint Thomas

Author:Geraint Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Quercus Publishing Ltd
Published: 2015-09-23T04:00:00+00:00

Belgium

You want to know what Belgium is like? Before one race over there when I was a teenager, rather than putting the riders up in a hotel, they stuck us in a barn. With stretchers for beds.

That’s Belgium.

Belgium, for the professional cyclist, means the end of winter and the slow start of spring. So, when I shut my eyes, I see this: rows of dark, bent trees; narrow, wet roads; grey skies overhead with rain on the way or just passed through; barren ploughed fields; and cold-looking cows. Plus the occasional knocking shop.

In some ways, the country seems frozen in time. It’s a place where the wind blows hard and the droopy moustache rules uncontested. The main squares of the towns where we race and stay seem so familiar from films that you half expect to hear a heavy, clunking sound and see a tank roll round the corner, gun barrel swinging round towards the clock tower.

It’s a nation in love with cycling, a nation in love with the strange, the unpronounceable and the almost unrideable: Omloop Het Nieuwsblad, E3 Harelbeke, La Flèche Wallonne.

Racing there as a junior was a significant culture shock. We’d pile over the Channel and come up against traditions that were entirely alien to a lad from Cardiff. You would go down for breakfast, starving hungry as always, to find only black, chewy bread, slices of meat and hunks of cheese. For a while I couldn’t work it out. Had I come to the wrong room, or had I slept in and come down instead for lunch?

Everything was fried. Everything had meat in it. Particularly popular was meat that had been fried.

Before races we would always be served the same dish: a watery spag bol, with cheese on top that had the appearance and taste of stale straw. To this day it brings back awful memories. My wife, Sara, makes a cracking spag bol, but I simply can’t handle it. Too many mental scars.

I’m aware that the Belgian tradition of mayonnaise on their chips is frowned upon by many British visitors. With repeated trips and tastings it grows on you; I now view it as a good thing. The beer is a different story. You need to remember that cyclists are very poor drinkers. We don’t have the build for it. If ever we could handle it, long spells of abstinence have turned us back into teenage novices.

It’s a dangerous game. In Belgium, every beer is an exponential version of what we might taste at home. Their session lager is equivalent to our man-killer. If they just want a light ale, perhaps something around midday on a hot afternoon, they’ll still start off on something coming in at 9 per cent.

That’s a problem for anyone, let alone a cyclist at racing weight with the sort of thirst 220 kilometres of hard riding brings on. Every year after Paris–Roubaix, the longest and hardest of the spring Classics, the chef at our usual hotel will celebrate the end of the misery by bringing out a tasting menu of local beers.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.