Icons of cycling: Ghent Six
Giles Belbin traces the disputed origins of Belgium’s most legendary track meet
On November 20, 2016 Mark Cavendish and Sir Bradley Wiggins sat in a press conference at the Kuipke velodrome, having just won the Ghent Six and brought the curtain down on a remarkable track partnership that had recorded two Madison world titles. For Wiggins there was no better place to call time. “It’s such a special place,” he said after the win. “All the dirt on the walls and the windows has probably been here since Rik Van Looy and Van Steenbergen. It’s just bloody great.”
According to the official website, the 2016 edition was the 76th Ghent Six Day. That number is based on the inaugural event being held in 1922, a race won by the Swiss rider Oscar Egg and his Belgian partner Marcel Buysse, who beat his younger brother and future Tour de France winner Lucien, and fellow Belgian Henri Van Lerberghe, by a couple of laps.
Described by L’auto as being a huge financial success, and with one famous Belgian brother beating another, it made for a notable opening chapter of an event that is now the most famous of six-day races. But was it really the first Ghent Six?
An earlier start
In October 2016, following research by Filip Walenta, a Belgian amateur historian of the www.karelvanwijnendaele.be project, it became clear that a six-day event had first been organised in the city seven years earlier than previously thought. “Incredible but true: a six-day race will take place in Ghent on Sunday, October 3 and the days following,” ran a story unearthed by Walenta that had been published by Het Volk in September 1915. With two days of racing hosted by velodromes in Evergem, Mariakerke and Gentbrugge, and an all-belgian field, Jules Van Renterghem and Pol Verstraete were crowned the winners.
The event wasn’t held again until that race in 1922, from which time it has been held frequently if not continuously, with lengthy periods in the 1930s and 1940s when the race disappeared from the calendar. Since 1965, however, it has been an annual event. That was the year that Patrick Sercu, the greatest six-day rider in history, took his maiden six-day win, riding alongside Eddy Merckx. Sercu, who would go on to become the director of the event, would end his career with a record 11 Ghent Six titles.
“Ghent. It’s home,” he told Graeme Fife in 2015. Other notable winners include Rik Van Looy, Rik Van Steenbergen, Peter Post, Etienne De Wilde, Danny Clarke and Britain’s Tony Doyle.
The race’s saddest moment came in November 2006 when the Spanish rider Isaac Gálvez died after colliding with Dimitri De Fauw. The event was cancelled, with Sercu describing it as an absolute low point of his career.