The sound of cobblestones. The season of the northern cycling classics begins

Once upon a time, when bicycles were made of steel, up there in Flanders, in that abundant month and a half which was worth an entire season, it was a concert of silvery sounds. Tic, tin, ten, tec. Steel has the quality of almost eternity and that of sharpness, of acoustic grace. Carbon has other advantages: it is light, it can be shaped according to the aerodynamic needs of the moment. Up there in Flanders, however, it made the sound of those races go astray. Sounds that actually got lost on the day of the races among the noisy and incessant shouting of the huge crowds that poured, poured, on the side of the road at each race, more or less famous and celebrated, that was run. Because if it is true that for the Ronde, the Tour of Flanders, those thirteen thousand square kilometers of land between the Ysel and the Meuse, between France and the Netherlands, stopped, stop, because there was, there is, nothing better than the Ronde, even for the other races the mobilization it was huge and there were, there are, plenty of women, men and children to see the bicycles moving along the streets of Flanders. People carried buzz, what covered the tic, tin, ten, tec of the looms grappling with the stones. We needed to spend the previous days, those of reconnaissance, or any other day, because every day up there is the good one to tackle the cobblestones.

For the Belgian composer and pianist Marcel Quinet, the sound of bicycles sliding over the stones was “a musical fantasy for violin and harpsichord”, a tinkling “reminiscent of certain rounds of Argentine tango”.

There is no longer that sound. Carbon replaced the tic, tin, ten, tec in a tuc, tun, ton, toc, decidedly less cheerful, but so be it. Despite this, perhaps no one has noticed, cycling hasn’t abandoned Flanders, it can’t. The recall is too great, despite the fact that the sound of the bikes has changed.

The scarce month and a half that has the land of cobblestones as its epicenter: that territory with a Flemish majority, but which borders, not giving a damn about what men have wanted to divide, into France in the Hauts-de-France. The forty days of the stones begin today with theOmloop Het Nieuwsbladwas Omloop van Vlaanderen – then Omloop Het Volk -, the race that dared to challenge the Tour of Flanders.

It was 1945 when Jérôme Stevens, director of Het Volk, organized the first Omloop. The goal was to create a race that represented the true essence of Flanders, the one that in his view the Ronde van Vlaanderen was no longer able to do. There was little sporting, however, in all this. The real problem was his relationship with Karel van Wijnendaele, the father of the Tour of Flanders. Stevens was a convinced socialist, van Wijnendaele cared little or nothing about politics. Stevens saw Het Volk closed down by the Nazi occupiers, Karel van Wijnendaele had continued to run Het Nieuwsblad despite the Nazis and this, for Stevens, was synonymous with collaborationism. The second, however, did not like the Nazis, the only thing he had in mind was to allow the Ronde to be run. He succeeded. Years later, in 2008 and for the sake of mockery, Het Nieuwsblad merged with Het Volk and now after Omloop there is the name of the newspaper that belonged to Karel van Wijnendaele.

The Omloop has become an enjoyable, hard-fought, spectacular race. Especially the way of the northern countryside. However, it failed in the slightest to overshadow the Ronde, still today, when racing, a sort of unofficial Flemish national holiday. Or maybe even more official than all the other holy days.

The Omloop Het Nieuwsblad is the overture of a less shrill musical work, but due to the modified construction material of the frames, always the same and at the same time always different. A musical work that pays grace to the least graceful type of road pavement there is. Because the stones of the north are uncomfortable, treacherous, cruel. And for this fascinating, bewitching, exciting. It is enough to pass over it pedaling a bicycle once to understand that this is a universe that has nothing, or almost nothing, to do with what we had known up to that moment. And a few pedal strokes are enough to understand if you are made for all that, or if you hate it. Difficult to remain indifferent, almost impossible.

The world of pavé starts from the Omloop (for both men and women), passes through the Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, the fastest and least stony of the races in the north, and will end on April 9 with Paris-Roubaix.

Always stones, but different.

For the late Lieuwe WestraDutch in love with Flanders, the pavé of Flanders was “harmonious and harsh”, that of Roubaix, “disharmonious and ruthless”: “They may seem similar, but sometimes there is nothing more different than what at first impression it appears to us as similar”.

In Flanders, pavé is also ascending, pointing to the sky with its exposed mineral corners and those small and less small spaces of empty dust and earth that divide them, as sensual as a diastema that appears in the smile of certain women.

The northern season comes and goes, always returns. And he is always prey to that desire to be there to watch the races in the midst of that immense crowd, fed on sausages and beers, and then leave the platform and try to pedal the same roads traveled by the runners and bask in the mineral shower that the stones they pour on you, almost wanting to welcome us into their world. An uncomfortable world, therefore irresistible.