Television shows races, not transfers. So on 14 September there was nothing to watch: five riders leaving the Delta Hotel Montréal and riding a hundred kilometres or so to Bromont, where Belgium has set up before the Worlds on 27 September. Benoot did sixty of them.
Behind them, the same road, by car: soigneur David Geeroms, mechanic Dario Kloeck and sports director Klaas Lodewyck. That is the car Rik went looking for in the photographs.
At the front, I couldn’t tell you, there were five of them and they had the whole day. At the back, I can. A hundred kilometres means bidons, and bidons don’t travel on their own. With us the transfers were done by car, and we used to fight over the seat next to the driver, because the one in the back held the bikes. They call it logistics, but it’s a house move.
Rune Herregodts, the Belgian road champion, arrived at Bromont later, without having ridden the Canadian Grands Prix. Since then the group has trained together, Evenepoel, Herregodts and Segaert out on their time trial bikes. On the spot, Maxim Goethals of VTM NIEUWS describes the set-up: “A Canadian cook has even been hired for the riders.”
A cook, a base, a car following: very good, it’s a proper job now. What I look at is the moment everyone has arrived and there is nothing left to announce. Three bikes against a wall, a mechanic working, and a coffee somewhere. On Sunday they’ll show the start ramp thirty times and the wall zero times. De koers, the race, as they say in Flanders, also holds together on that.
The time trial is on Sunday. Belgium lines up Evenepoel, Segaert and Herregodts; Evenepoel can become the first rider to take four world titles in a row in the discipline, with Filippo Ganna as his main rival.
It’s true, we checked: Het Laatste Nieuws.
