The stones of the Tour of Flanders have become a land of love. Speak Philippe Gilbert

Once upon a time there was a town where the roads were “slabs of earth as hard as marble if it is dry, but if it rains you find yourself pedaling on a finger of mud. And worse still when these are covered by stones: there are chasms even five fingers deep between them. Steep streets pointing to the sky. When you race there, the goal isn’t to win, it’s to go home”. That country was Flanders. It was 21 March 1922 when Henri Pélissier, one of the strongest riders of the time (he won, among many races, a Tour de France, a Sanremo and Lombardy three times), told the newspaper L’Auto about his first experience at the Tour of Flanders. Pélissier had already raced on stones – he had won Paris-Roubaix twice – and also in Belgium, but always in Wallonia (the Ronde van België, a stage race, and the finale of Paris-Brussels, ran in the Ardennes). However, that experience shocked him: “The Tour of Flanders it’s not a race, it’s a massacre. Only Flemings are allowed to cycle there, because they are used to it. No foreigner will ever win up there. Not even a valley.” The first edition of the Ronde dates back to 1913, the first Walloon to win it was Claude Criquielion in 1987. The second Philip Gilbert in 2017. “The realization of a dream,” says al Sports sheet Philip Gilbert.

Pélissier had the gift of being able to convince everyone that it was never his fault when he didn’t win (he finished fourth). He was a great storyteller. That time, however, he got the prediction wrong, but in the mistake he got it right. Because it is true that the following year the Ronde was won by a Swiss, Henri Suter, but until 1949, until Fiorenzo Magni, Flanders was a Flemish affair. And so it went on for decades. Some foreigners won, but it remained a Fleming affair.

It’s not like that anymore. A Belgian hasn’t won the Tour of Flanders since 2017: Philippe Gilbert. It was April 2, he got rid of his opponents on the Oude Kwaremont, crossed the finish line alone, with the bike raised to the sky. “It was what I had dreamed of since I was a child,” he tells al Sports sheet on the sidelines of the Warner Bros. Discovery cycling season launch event. A dream that could become a regret, the memory of a missed opportunity. “It was 2002, I was racing among the under 23s and in that Ronde u23s I was in the good group, I had the chance to win it in the sprint: I finished fourth. I thought: I had a chance to win Flanders and I lost it,” he says. Years went by, Gilbert returned to racing it as a professional: “I brushed it twice: third in 2009 and in 2010”. For five years he watched it on TV, he returned in 2017 “and I finally won. The Tour of Flanders is a symbol of our country. Perhaps my victory with the Belgian champion’s shirt was also symbolic, because it is true that there are political differences between Flanders and Wallonia, it is true that there are two languages ​​and two cultures, but in the end we are two parts of one thing ”. Tomorrow (Sunday 2 April live on Eurosport 1 and Discovery+ from 10.30) exactly six years will have passed since then.

You have to love the Ronde. It requires passion, feeling. Otherwise she doesn’t fit the stones of the walls. Gone are the times when Flemish pavé was scary. Now we dream of it, everywhere in the world we look for stones to get carried away by the imagination, by the hope of being able to pedal up there one day. Gilbert’s love of stones started “close to home. At Remouchamps there is a small incline, 200 meters in cobblestones with an average gradient of 15%. When I was young I often went up and down, at full speed. I loved running on the stones”.

Above all, Philippe Gilbert was the man capable of breaking down a prejudice that had foolishly begun to spread in cycling towards the end of the 1980s. The one for which specialization was needed and those who went fast uphill could not aspire to win on stones. “Maybe I really was the first, after many years, to say that it was possible to be competitive in all the Classics. It hadn’t happened in years, but that didn’t mean it was impossible, I thought. Because van Looy, de Vlaeminck, Merckx had succeeded. They were champions, sure, but why had it become impossible? My dream was to win all the Monuments Classics, I worked hard to make it happen. And now I’m happy to see that other riders, like Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogacar, Wout van Aert, want to try and do the same. I hope they can accomplish what I failed to accomplish. It would be a satisfaction for me”. Gilbert only missed the Sanremo. Flanders, Roubaix, Liège and Lombardy managed to win them.

Philippe Gilbert has had the merit of opening a crack in cycling. A crack from which a generation of aggressive cyclists emerged. “I see myself a bit in them. Mine was certainly a different kind of cycling, especially in the early years in a group. Back then it was customary to wait and use the team to keep the race under control. But I liked to attack and I tried to do it every time I had the opportunity,” he says. He adds: “I like to think that when these kids watched me run when they were kids, they thought: ‘This runner is cool because he always attacks.’ And that they wanted to do it too. Maybe. It would be nice if that were the case. What is certain is that I like to see them run, to see them attack: it’s a beautiful show. It’s much better to see a race like those of these years than the cycling of a few years ago: back then you waited, waited, waited and then nothing happened. If cycling enthusiasts have increased today, it is also thanks to these guys”.

Gilbert retired at the end of last season. Now he comments on the races, for Eurosport, from a motorbike. “It’s a good battle even on the bike. You have to do what you did on your bike, look for the best place and fight to defend it, because even if you’re the ‘commentator’, nobody gives you space. You have to be in the right place at the right time. I realized that I’m still doing what I used to do on my bike”.