ANALYSIS: DUTCH DELIGHT

For 12 years starting at the end of the 1970s, the Dutch dominated the spring classics. Dutch cycling journalist Léon de Kort looks at how the modern generation compares

We look at Terpstra’s place in the pantheon of great Dutch classics heroes

The 12 years between 1977 and 1988 were exceptional for the Dutch at the classics. It was a sort of golden age. In 12 seasons, Dutch riders took a dozen wins in the so-called monuments. Of course, some riders made their mark in cycling’s history books before and after these dates, but their successes were considered oneoffs, as if their numbers had come up in the lottery. That all changed in the spring of 1977, with the discovery of Jan Raas. He was from southern Holland and the North Sea’s unrelenting weather and its knife-sharp winds provided a training environment which shaped him in a way that hadn’t been seen before with Dutch riders. He was dubbed the ‘killer of the spring’ and he seemed able to handle anything.

On 19 March 1977, riding for the small Frisol-Gazelle team – a team he ended up in after a disappointing two years at the giant TI-Raleigh squad – he pulled off a coup by winning Milan-San Remo. Celebrations were in order once more when he won Amstel Gold Race later in the spring, his first of five wins there. That July, he took the first of 10 Tour de France stages.

Alarm bells rang clearly for TI-Raleigh’s manager, Peter Post, who understood that he had to regain this quirky, skilful and impetuous rider as soon as humanly possible. Post got his man for the 1978 season and together the team would set a new standard in cycling.

Partly due to the strength of the team collective that Post insisted on, Raas evolved into an icon of the one-day races. No season went by without wins for Raas, and in his wake, other Dutch riders came to the fore. Adrie van der Poel won Flanders and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Hennie Kuiper, a farmer’s child from east Holland, kept up even better with Raas. Kuiper won Flanders and Lombardia in 1981, ParisRoubaix in 1983 and Milan-San

Remo in 1985. But strangely, where Raas represented the power of a well-oiled machine, Kuiper was cast as the underdog from smaller teams, such as DAF Trucks, Aernoudt Meubelen and Vérandalux. This contrast only resulted in more respect for the Dutch within the sport. “Those Dutchies are riders to be watched,” called out the Flemish fans, worried by the fact that maybe their riders were no longer the dominant force on their home roads.

The ‘Raas bunch’ were definitely a top generation. It was an ideal mix of star riders with winners’ legs, and consistent strong domestiques. But sooner or later, everything that comes, goes. After Van der