An attempt at normality in the wake of unspeakable atrocity. A day after terrorist attacks just 100 kilometres away in Brussels left 31 people dead, the professional peloton assembled in Roeselare on Wednesday morning for the start of Dwars door Vlaanderen.
It is usually one of the most boisterous occasions of the season, heralding as it does the beginning of the fevered countdown to the Tour of Flanders. For the ten days that follow, the eyes of the cycling world seem to be trained solely on this postage stamp of cobbles and hills.
For rather more doleful reasons, the eyes of the world at large are trained on Belgium right now. With the country at its maximum terror threat level of four, the early expectation was that Dwars door Vlaanderen would be cancelled, but on Tuesday evening, director Guy Delesie announced that the race would continue as planned.
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And so on Wednesday morning, albeit with heavy hearts, thousands of fans poured into Roeselare to do what they always do in the last week of March in this part of the world: watch a bike race. For some, it was perhaps an act of defiance. For many more, it was a simple but no less important attempt at bringing some order and routine to a moment of anxiety and chaos.
“Just because we are racing today, it doesn’t mean that our thoughts aren’t with the victims,” Greg Van Avermaet (BMC) said after he signed on, and the reminders were all around him.
As a mark of respect to the victims, the usual team presentation was not held in the main square. There was no music blaring over the public address system and there were no jovial interviews with speaker Michel Wuyts on the podium. A number of teams, including Orica-GreenEdge and Tinkoff, wore black armbands in memory of the dead.
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