Getting the swing of things at the "Kermess World Championships"! (Huesden)

Chris in the break

Heading to our third race here in Belgium, the team was fully motivated to improve on our last efforts the UCI 1.2 race where we swam to the finish line, just a few days prior. Huesden (another pro kermess) has been known in the past as the “ World Championships of Kermess.”  It has a history of over 200 starters, several World Tour teams showing up and boosting full rosters, all on a fast smooth course. Unfortunately, due to other races that have grown in the area, such as Eneco Tour, the number of World Tour teams has declined over the years. Nonetheless, Lotto Belisol was fielding a small team of riders along with several other pro-conti guys.

 For Huesden, Astellas would be fielding all 8 of our guys. The sun was shining and the weather looked to be favorable. The course consisted of 2 overpasses: a long drawn out section in the final 2 kilometers before the finish and a winding narrow section in-between the two overpasses.

The sun was bright

The start of the race was much slower then the start of the previous races we have been in. I was able to get into a smooth rhythm in the pack and slowly move up. With 23 laps at about 7 km per lap, I would have plenty of time to move up. Positioning was going to be important in the crosswind sections, and I needed to stay attentive to any sort of split that could form off the front. Missing the break at our previous race was a fatal blunder we made as a team, and we were not going to make that mistake again.

As we got within 200 meters of finishing the first lap, I heard the harrowing sound of a front tire puncture. I raised my hand in the air to signal the riders around me that I had a puncture as well as the moto referee to call my team car up to me to change my front wheel. I rode my front flat cautiously until I heard my team car honk at me. I stopped and got my front wheel off the bike and waited for my mechanic to put on the spare. Within 30 seconds I was off on the chase! If this was any race in Texas, I may be calling it quits for the day because there was no way I was going to be able to chase back onto a pack at such an aggressive part of the race. However, I was able to safely and smoothly make up lost ground by utilizing the caravan of team cars that followed the race. Within 15 minutes, I was able to leapfrog myself from car to car till I finally made it safely and smoothly to the tail end of the group.

Once I was back in the pack, I kept calm and moved up right away. I knew that the race was still over 90 miles long, and I needed to conserve as much energy as I could for the first hour.

Team was active for the entirety of the race

Two laps later, as I was moving up the outside of the group, a rough crack sliced the sidewall of my front tire. I quickly put my hand back in the air like I did just a short while ago. Much like before, I was able to quickly and easily get a wheel change and smoothly integrate myself back via the caravan of cars and get back in the pack a few minutes later.  At this point, I looked at my cycling computer and saw that we were only 59 minutes in the race. Two flats in 59 minutes was not a great start, but it’s better then being out of the race entirely. I was eager to move to the front and help my team.

I quickly learned where the hard parts of the course were – the second overpass and the long guttered section concluding each lap. There were many times where I would be in the pack as we were spread across the road and I could see the front was just in reach, maybe just 15 riders back. Moments later we would be single file in the gutter, and the same guys that were just in reach were a quarter mile up the road and around the bend.  It’s something that I have never experienced anywhere else in my racing times. I knew that all it was going to take would be one single rider to open a gap when the race was single file to cause riders to get dropped. As we continued racing, I slowly felt better and better. Unlike previous races here in Belgium, this course was very easy to remember and to predict where and when the attacks and surges were going to go from. 

After about 2 hours of fighting hard in the pack (which included me going off the back for a lap with about 20 other riders), a random thunderstorm rolled through. Within moments, the rain was coming down so hard that it felt like little daggers were hitting my arms. The water was so cold that a mist was forming over the peloton from the cold water hitting our warm jerseys. As we approached the end of that lap, I was able to find gaps that were forming from intimidated riders, and made my way to the front. Before long, I was in a three-man attack with teammates Cortlan and Matt as we were taking advantage of rider’s timidness to corner in the rain. Chris was up the road in the important break of the day that was about two minutes ahead, the rest of us were trying to break things up to see if we could form some sort of chase group.

Matt and I were attacking in the rain until Matt finally got in a three-man chase group. Unfortunately, as Matt slowly started to ride away from the peloton, the rain stopped and Lotto moved to the front to organize a chase. Within a lap, Matt was brought back into the fold, and Lotto was rotating on the front for a while. I launched a counterattack heading into the narrow technical section to keep the pressure on, but Lotto was riding strong. As the laps started to tick by, I was able to ride comfortably near the front with my team.  This was a nice change from the hectic start of the race I had.

As the end of the race approached, I was not very active other then a few accelerations I would try to put at the front. We caught the leaders that were off the front for several laps and everyone was getting ready for the field sprint. I tried to push towards the front, but as we are now in the final 2 laps of the race and already over 100 miles, I knew my legs were limited. I did my best to get towards the front to help out Brecht in the finale, but the speed during the final laps slowed down so much that I could not find any room to move up. I wound up finishing in the pack.

Each day we are seeing improvements here in Europe. Huesden is the first race that I felt like I was racing strong as I rode at the front for more then just an isolated moment. As a team, we were racing strong and were able to get Brecht a top 20 with 16^th place.  Two more races here in Europe before I go home and start another semester at the University of Houston. Both these races are a big UCI 1.1 and I could not be more excited!