The Tour of Flanders will celebrate its 100th edition this Sunday, and it is set to be a bumper race with Fabian Cancellara, Tom Boonen, Alexander Kristoff, Greg Van Avermaet, Peter Sagan and more all ready to duke it out for the title. Known as the Ronde Van Vlaanderen in native tongue, the race is the centrepiece of the Belgian racing calendar and sees a party atmosphere envelop the region.
Trek-Segafredo rider Jasper Stuyven is a local Flandrien and will be riding the race for the third time this Sunday, as he hopes to deliver Fabian Cancellara to a fourth and final victory. Stuyven knows the roads of the Tour of Flanders better than most, and he sat down with Cyclingnews to discuss what makes De Ronde the race it is and what it is like to ride one of the biggest races of the year.
The Tour of Flanders is a special race. On that one day, almost everyone in Belgium is coming out to the course to watch the race, to have a beer and have fun with friends and family, and watch the race passing by. It’s hard to describe the feelings and the atmosphere on race day as you ride on the bus into the starting area.
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I remember my first Tour of Flanders in 2014. I didn’t have any nerves; I was just excited. We had Fabian that year, and I was thinking ’how nice would it be to finish this off?’ You know how hard everyone in the team has been training for this, so I was just excited to see how it would turn out.
I always try to enjoy the first part of the race because once you get to the climbs, it’s full of people. You need to make sure that you are focused all the time because when you try to ride on that bit on the side of the road, where the cobbles are not that bad, you are quite close to the spectators, so you have to be careful. You only have to put one foot wrong, and you’re crashing.
As you ride out of Bruges, you can see that the peloton is nervous already. There are the teams that want to be at the front to try and control the race, like us. Then you have the guys who want to be up front because they want to get into the break, and maybe they can survive and get into the final that way. Then, of course, you have the director in your ear saying you have to be there.
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