THE RENT A CROWD
That Saturday night, in a co-op bar near the Omloop finish line in Meerbeke, where a band dressed in retro cycling jerseys played punk and punters drank a local brew, a Michael Valgren appreciation society came into being among the youngsters partying into a Saturday night. And by the start of Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne the Astana rider had received a mass Facebook friend request from more than 200 20-somethings in the Ninove suburb.
Team and rider fan clubs are a part of the cycling culture in Flanders, as Joeri Ballekens, secretary of the Daniel Oss fan club, explained the next morning at the start of Kuurne-BrusselsKuurne. Procycling watched him and the club president, Ward Vandemaele, pursue the outgoing Italian up Brugsesteenweg, the long strip club-studded street along which the buses park.
“Sure, we have a fan club for each rider, but in essence I think everyone ends up cheering for whichever rider is winning,” Ballekens said. By the time the race had left for another loop in the Flemish Ardennes – with 12 climbs in total – Ballekens’s crew had stationed themselves outside a pop-up bar close to the startline, where the roguish old Classics star Roger De Vlaeminck had fired the starting pistol. Where the Omloop start was slickly produced amid the grandeur of city centre Ghent, KBK was far more homespun: a reflection of its lower status and volunteerrun organisation. An ancient brass band played jaunty tunes, while race stewards paraded their poster of last year’s winner, Peter Sagan, depicted in the pose of Napoleon in a famous Jacques-Louis David painting.
Ballekans explained how a group of 40-year-olds got together to form the Oss fan club last year. “I’m not saying it was a midlife crisis but we had to do something,” he grinned. They picked Oss, the Bora-Hansgrohe team-mate of Sagan, because the Italian didn’t have a fan club and was “as crazy as we are”. One email to Oss outlining the plan and he had a Flemish fan club. Entry to the ‘Tifossi’ was assured for those who bought the official hoody.
As well as rallying behind a specific rider, Ballekens’s crew also had a favourite race: E3-Harelbeke. “Each Classic has its specific atmosphere. Omloop is probably more formal than this. Our race is E3-Harelbeke. They always make the comparison that E3 is the little Tour of Flanders, but with E3, you still have the opportunity to see the race many times. Flanders is too big now: you can’t follow that one any more.”
Their man, Oss, was on a good weekend. He made the first group over the Muur the previous day. In Kuurne, the 31-year-old was in the lead group that formed on the Oude Kwaremont 85km out. He bridged up to Jasper Stuyven’s back wheel and spent 20km leading until a puncture ruined his race with around 30km to go. A pity. The easterly that stymied Omloop was a tailwind here and all but guaranteed the pair a fighting chance of making it into the final. Still, Ballekans et al probably didn’t mind. Asked if, really, the fan club was just an excuse to go drinking, he leaned in conspiratorially: “Don’t tell our wives!”