At De Ronde

So, last week I mentioned that we were up in Ghent in order to catch De Ronde van Vlaanderen cycling race.  When we lived in Luxembourg we tried to catch as many weekend single day races as we could, Omloop, Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, Liege-Bastogne-Liege, Paris-Roubaix, Amstel Gold, etc.  "The Classics" are my favorite races of the season.  The big grand tours are great and all, but the luster has worn off a little over the years.  With the never ending doping sagas and the monotonous and predictable tactics, they no longer grab my attention as they once did.  The action of a single day race, however, is still magic.  While I adore LBL and Paris-Roubaix, in my opinion, the best race to be there for is De Ronde.  There's nothing like being on one of the Flemish hills with a big screen TV, a cone of frites, a plastic cup of beer, and a bunch of Belgian cycling fans.  Nothing.

We were on the Paterberg in 2013 before the sun came up and I took a ton of photos all day of the action on the hill.

The rest of that set is up on my Flickr page, if you want to see some rider photos and shots from some of the other races.

This year on the Paterberg was about the same.  We still got there before sunrise and watched a hill in the middle of nowhere turn into one of the biggest parties Flanders probably sees all year. The medic ambulance got stuck in the mud again.  The burgers and frites were still hot, good, and messy.  The beer was flowing, but improved with Kwaremont being served instead of Jupiler.  The big screen was there so we didn't miss a moment of the action of the men's race (they still refuse to broadcast the women's race).  There were a few differences, though.  I don't know if this was a new thing for the 2015 edition or not, but there was a huge VIP pavilion at the top of the climb which created a weird dynamic early in the day with folks tramping up and down the hill in formal attire, while the rest of us were in jeans and waterproofs.  The organizers also have added free stools at the TV which were eagerly snatched up and carried off.  I spent most of the morning shooting time lapse, so I didn't take very many spectator shots.  I'm still working on the time lapse stuff (very laborious business, time lapse is).

The moon was incredible this year

Free stools

VIP area

The crowd was a little more rowdy than in 2013.  The beer flowed a bit more freely, there was some pot smoking going on, a few little brawls, and, alas, some unfortunate behavior from some of the fans.  A word of wisdom to all my fellow English speakers, please be careful what you say.  Pretty much everyone in Flanders understands English.

Anyway, the races themselves were awesome.  I would have loved live footage of the women's race before they arrived at the Paterberg, but I gotta tell ya, we were all really surprised when Elisa Longo Borgihini showed up totally on her own.  I was completely unprepared with my equipment so here is a really out of focus shot.

I'm not into sports photography, and there are so many amazing and talented people out there shooting cycling I don't really feel the need to be.  Of course, when the riders come through I can't not pull out the camera.  The intense crowd jostling this year really made it a challenge to get any race shots and the spot down by the TV is the wrong place to be if you want a good angle anyway.  Be that as is may, here are a handful of shots from down in the thick of things.

Alexander Kristoff and Niki Terpstra on the last pass of the Paterberg

De Ronde is a really special event, and I highly recommend it to any cycling fan or for anyone wanting a unique cultural experience.  The great thing about De Ronde is its huge local importance.  This is the biggest sporting event of the year in this part of Flanders.  If you sit at one of the major climbs, the men pass by a couple of times, the race is up on a TV, there's food, toilets, drinks, pretty much everything you could need.  Plus, there's the women's race, so you can actually see some of that action.  Now that going up to Belgium for a weekend is no longer so easy since we moved to Bavaria, we can really only make it up there for one race.  We'd be hard pressed to choose a race besides De Ronde.