Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe is launching a small cyclocross team, and what we will see on television is the race, the jersey, maybe a podium. What we will not see is what Sven Vanthourenhout told Sporza: that he is meant to support the young riders and will therefore often be present at the cross races. Often present. That is the sentence I am keeping.
Because at the back, I can tell you, the one who matters is not the sports director shouting down the radio but the one standing in the car park at seven in the morning, when it is freezing and the van will not start. He was a cyclocross rider himself, Vanthourenhout. He knows cross happens as much around the tent as on the circuit. Nobody ever filmed the tent.
The team is not aiming to win the big races. The project belongs to the development structure, and the focus is on four young riders, with Gianni Vermeersch as mentor among the pros. A mentor, with us, was called the old hand. The one who showed you how high to hold out a bidon, and only told you once. What Vermeersch will do, I couldn’t tell you. I know what it is to have someone ahead of you who knows.
Vanthourenhout also says he reminds the young riders, who are 16 or 17, that they still have a long way to go. That is true for everyone. Me, a hundred and twelfth in the Ronde (the Tour of Flanders), inside the time limit, it took me two and a half seasons to work out where the car parked.
If he is there that often, he can bring a second garden hose.
So, if Vanthourenhout ever passes through a cross race near Ronse, there will be a coffee waiting for him at the café once the tent is folded. De koers, the race, as they say in Flanders, will have finished long before. He will still be there.
It’s true, we checked: Sporza.
