Remco Evenepoel is European champion ahead of Giulio Ciccone, by a few millimetres. To the naked eye, nobody could say who had won; the photo finish did. The next day, Ciccone wrote on Instagram that he had watched the footage of the line hundreds of times without being able to make what he saw fit the result. He also says Evenepoel was the strongest and that he has a lot of respect for him.
In the evening, the UEC put out a statement. Its system records the line 13,000 times a second. Thirteen thousand. I put my phone on the kitchen table and opened my bike computer app.
My computer records once a second. One. On Sunday, on the Overijse climb, it gives me a segment where I reach the top ahead of Didier, from the club. Didier has the same segment, with him ahead of me. Same climb, same minute, two winners. At the café we argued till noon, and we had no statement.
Ciccone talks about 0.0028 seconds. HLN says the data gives 0.00028. Me, at one frame a second, 0.00028, I do not see it go by. I do not even see it coming. Between two frames, my computer has time to miss the sprint, the handshake and half the podium photo.
So I did the sum the other way round. If my computer took 13,000 frames a second, it would have seen the red light in Oudenaarde, the coffee at the top of the Kwaremont (the Flemish cobbled climb), the backpack swinging about, and probably the exact moment Didier threw in his last kick. I am no longer sure I won Overijse. I am no longer sure I climbed Overijse at the speed I have been telling people about for two years.
The UEC says the reference point is the front of the front wheel. Mine is the moment I think of pressing the button. That makes a difference of about one bend.
I’m not saying I win. I’m saying that at one frame a second, with Didier, we can talk about it for a long time.
It’s true, we checked: HLN.
