C H O C O L A D E JACQUES
In November we even played football matches in the afternoon, to give you an idea of how oldschool it was
The Rabobank Continental team was probably one of the biggest teams to ride for as an amateur. You received a quality label once you rode for that team, and I was one of the only Belgians there at that time. I was studying economics at university; I always had a plan B. Of course, it was my dream to turn pro but I think studying is very important. I was in my fourth and last year at under-23 and had a bad season in 2005, I broke my pelvis in May, but I got back racing towards the end of the year and got an offer from Topsport Vlaanderen, Chocolade Jacques. I didn’t hesitate to turn pro with them.
Topsport was the perfect team to turn pro with, for me it was the best step I could take. I really enjoyed those first years, I signed two years and then another year. When you’re young you see all those races on TV and you’re dreaming of riding the
Tour de France and Paris-Nice, but, for example, a race like Paris-Nice is not as romantic as it looks on TV. That’s what you’re a bit protected from in Topsport. You get time to taste all the races without a lot of pressure and without doing the biggest races from the beginning.
A lot of the staff at Topsport remain the same. They’re still really good friends - I last saw them in Calpe at training camp in January. The director Walter Planckaert is still there. A lot of riders who became bigger riders afterwards turned pro with Topsport. It has a lot of tradition; a lot of cycling has changed since I turned pro and it really was more traditional, more old-school.
The riders are all Flemish, you all speak the same language, you probably know each other from the under 23 races, and an important thing was in the winter, twice a week, we trained together in Gent. In November we even played football matches in the afternoon, to give you an idea of how old-school it was, in a good way.
Turning pro was still something special, that is the point where you race against the bigger names. In Topsport we did races like Flèche Wallonne and Liège, so we could really taste the bigger races, although we never did a grand tour. I was a climber, I always wanted to ride grand tours, that was my ambition. I was always dreaming of the Tour de France, but I think everybody does as a young kid who loves cycling.