F
ROM A FLAT BELGIAN SIDE STREET,
the road becomes a wall. The hill is
only 600 meters long (less than half a
mile), but from its base it looks insur-
mountable. I’ve been in the saddle for
more than six hours already. I crane my neck to
see the summit, and tremble.
“What the fuck is that?” asks Andrea.
“Koppenberg,” I answer quickly, trying to limit
the breath I use.
“Oh, Jesus,” he says. Somebody laughs.
I’m riding one of the world’s hardest sportives,
the We Ride Flanders, a 229km odyssey through
the cobbled Flemish Ardennes in Belgium. The
route follows the same roads that professional
riders will tackle the next day in the Ronde van
Vlaanderen, or the Tour of Flanders. By my side
are three of my best friends: Andrea Sala from
Italy, Mateus Pimenta from Brazil, and Michel
Radermecker from Belgium. After riding 160 kilo-
meters, a mix of f lat terrain and some nasty hills,we suddenly face the hardest climb of the day.
It’s just rained gently, and the sharp, irregularly
shaped cobblestones are covered in a greasy film.
The road looks like a war trench dug into the side
of a hill. Dozens of people are walking up the
edges. Some riders have mud-splattered calves as
if they just ran a cross-country race. A few have
mud on their faces.
I shift to a low gear from the start, but my
muscles burn right away. The freshness and the
agility that I felt on the day’s first climbs are a
washed-out memory.
I shift once more, but the lever mushes against
the end of its throw. I’ve reached the lowest cog of
my cassette, my 32. I am only 50 or 60 meters in,
and I am out of string in my bow already.
MY JOURNEY TO THIS MUDDY HILL IN THE
Ardennes began five months earlier in a gloomy
pub in West London. It was November, and Andrea,Mateus, Michel, and I had gone
out for a couple of beers. Several
drinks in, we had a brilliant idea:
We each picked two big cycling
events that would take place in
2018, wrote them on a piece of paper, and put the
slips into a hat. We asked a stranger—a woman
who was drunker than we were—to pick one.
When we unfolded the chosen slip, we knew we
had a fight ahead.
For more than 100 years, the Ronde van Vlaan-
deren has captured the imagination of pros and
fans alike. Together with Milan-San Remo, Paris-
Roubaix, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, and Il Lombardia,
it’s one of the five Monuments in cycling, among the
oldest one-day races on the UCI calendar. Flanders,
Roubaix, and LBL each hold sportives for amateurs
the day before the pro race (Lombardia has a fondo
the day after, and San Remo offers one in June). For
the past 27 years, the We Ride Flanders sportive has
allowed any cyclist to experience the sensation of
riding the same roads as the pros. Each year some-
thing like 16,000 riders take part in one of four
routes: 74km, 139km, 174km, and 229km.
Of course, my group went for the big one.
We thought we were prepared. We’d double-
taped our handlebars and installed wider tires.
We’d watched old editions of the race on YouTube.
For months, while playing back race videos, I had
focused almost obsessively on the Koppenberg,
the steepest hill on the route, and often the one
in the worst condition.
The first time the hill was featured, in 1976,
even Eddy Merckx (who won Flanders in 1969
and 1975) had to dismount his bike and push. In
1985—still remembered as the toughest edition of
the race, thanks to a storm that blew in torrential
rain and winter temperatures—only two of the
173 riders were able to pedal to the top (and only
24 got to the finish line). THE WRITER
ON THE COBBLES
OF THE OUDE
KWAREMONT.Passo dello
Stelvio, Italy
race: Giro
d’Italia/
Giro Rosa
distance:
13.5 miles
vertical gain:
5,100 feetMount Baldy,
California
race: To u r
of California
distance:
12.9 miles
vertical gain:
4,800 feetMonte Zon-
colan, Italy
race: Giro
d’Italia/
Giro Rosa
distance:
6.3 miles
vertical gain:
4,000 feet
Mount Evans, Colorado
race: Bob Cook Memorial
Mount Evans Hill Climb
distance: 27.3 miles
Col du vertical gain: 6,600 feet
To u r m a l e t ,
France
race: To u r
de France
distance:- 8 mile s
vertical gain:
4,600 feet
Koppenberg,
Belgium
race: Ronde van
Vlaanderen
distance:
< 0.5 mile
vertical gain:
210 feetSportografICONIC CLIMBS IN BIKE
RACING—AND HOW THE
KOPPENBERG COMPARES76 BICYCLING.COM • ISSUE 1 | 2020