It’s springtime and the cobbled classics are upon us. The Koppenberg, the Taaienberg, the Paterberg, the Muur van Geraardsbergen, and the Kemmelberg – the list of cobbled roads is endless as are the heroes that have made them famous. Like Merckx, Van Looy, Cancellara, Boonen, Sagan, van Aert – some of the hard men of the pavé. Now add to that the women’s professional races and new legends are about to be written in stone.
Needless to say I am giddy with excitement this time of the year as racing is back and I’m at the drawing board once again, pen and brush in hand. I have visited many of these famous roads in my travels and was in awe at how you can feel the emotion hanging in the still morning air. How you can hear the screams of fans, the scraping of metal bikes as they hit the stone, and the struggle in the riders voices carried in the wind. These are hallowed grounds and worthy of our attention every spring as a new cycling season gets underway.
Like you I’ll watch many of these races on GCN or Flobikes at odd hours of the day with a beer in hand. And as I try to capture some of the excitement and color of spring racing in Belgium I will be counting the days until I can once again visit, to witness first hand some of the places that make the spring classics, and the stones forever my first love of cycling.
