I watch television on Sundays looking for the gruppetto, and I never find it, because they show the winner thirty times and the office zero times, so when a boy says he knows the big races only from TV, I tell myself he only knows the front so far.
Daan Depuydt, that’s his name. He told WielerFlits the cycling world is completely new to him and that he knows the big races only from television. He comes from mountain biking, and his cousin is Jens Schuermans, five-time Belgian champion. Last year, club-level races. At the end of last year Eric Braes spotted him first; this summer Sven Nys launched him on the road at Baloise Verzekeringen-Het Poetsbureau Lions. Until then he was also a self-employed plumber, cycling on the side of the job; since then he has stopped working altogether. And at the Tour du Limousin he finished second on the first day, then won the sprint two days later, ahead of Alex Aranburu among others.
Television may have shown that. What it does not show is what waits for any boy arriving in a new team: learning where the bidons are kept in the car, and at what height they are handed out. That takes a spring. He chose Picnic PostNL partly to ride for himself on a regular basis. A bidon has to be earned, and he earned his at the Limousin.
With us, in the window-frame team, on the first day they gave me eight bidons and a direction: backwards. Nobody had told me that de koers (the race, as they say in Flanders), on TV, is only half of it. The other half is the office: someone has the watch, someone has the percentage.
I only know the pros’ Ronde, the Tour of Flanders, from TV as well. Mine, I did for real.
He also said that after his win his phone exploded with managers wanting to talk. Mine never rang. A hundred and twelfth in the Ronde. Inside the time limit, go and look.
At the front, I couldn’t tell you what he will do. I just hope he sees the back at least once, with a coffee when the podium has been taken down.
It’s true, we checked: WielerFlits.
