Editor’s note: Perhaps the organizers read this story from the November/December 2016 issue of VeloNews, or maybe they were trying to emulate Schaal Sels, but regardless, Gent-Wevelgem 2017 will include 5.2km of unpaved farm roads.
Over cobblestones, dirt, and even grass-covered tracks, Belgium’s Schaal Sels is perhaps the most entertaining bicycle race you’ve never heard of. The race, which starts and finishes in the Antwerp suburb of Merksem, has actually been around since 1922. Famed Belgians Rik Van Looy and Edwig Van Hooydonck both won it, as did American Freddie Rodriguez. This year, cyclocross world champion Wout Van Aert took the big victory.
After toiling in anonymity for most of a century, Schaal Sels is two years into an eye-catching makeover. In 2014, construction on the road used for the finish threatened to cancel the race. The organizing club, Koninklijke Wielrijdersclub van Merksem, instead pulled out the map and scoured the Flemish countryside in search of a fresh new course.
When the curtain rose on the revised route in 2015, the old sprinter-friendly and mildly cobbled parcours was gone. The new compact, 195-kilometer route contained 34 kilometers of cobblestones and another 33 kilometers of onverhard, the Flemish word for the region’s unpaved farm roads. Some of these roads are dirt, others are gravel, and many are so unused that they are covered in grass. In total, more than 34 percent of the new Schaal Sels is now on non-tarmac surfaces. By comparison, the 27 pavé sectors of Paris-Roubaix cover only 21 percent of the Hell of the North.
The new course has boosted the race’s visibility. Two years after the redesign, Schaal Sels has vaulted from its place as a semi-anonymous semi-classic onto a list of hot properties that includes Italy’s Strade Bianche and France’s Tro-Bro Léon.
In truth, the race’s recent rejuvenation reflects a 20-year evolution in the tastes and whims of Belgian cycling. And the race’s transition from traditional tarmac onto its varied surfaces was due to the race’s progressive new management, which had both practical and fashionable reasons for the change. Whether the race’s newfound popularity leads to a step into cycling’s higher echelon is yet to be seen. For the foreseeable future, at least, the race hopes to carve out a unique identity as a catch-weight battle between the strongest one-day racers and the stars of cyclocross.
For most of the 20th century, Schaal Sels was a kermesse, one of the bread-and-butter Belgian circuit races whose town-based routes are affectionately known as “laps around the church.” By 1999, when Rodriguez took the win for Mapei – Quick-Step, Schaal Sels had climbed into the lower rungs of the UCI rankings. But the organizing committee was aging and funding was drying up.
That was when entrepreneur Ben Simons stepped in as head of the race organization. Simons’s most recent venture is a 50-percent stake in a project to build 19 power-generating wind turbines near Antwerp’s port. He brought new ambition and energy to the race, as well as a desire to take it outside the city. Under Simons’s guidance, the laps around the church expanded steadily outwards, further into the countryside.
“You don’t know what’s going to hit you next — but to be honest you can’t wait because it’s exciting and it’s just plain fun.”
“He’s transformed Schaal Sels from a kermesse to a race with a more interesting parcours going mostly through the fields where he grew up. And he’s proud of that,” says Wouter Nicolaes, one of the co-organizers of Schaal Sels. “It’s a green part in the north of the city of Antwerp, and with this race he wants to promote that area, because it’s rather forgotten.”
Though it climbed from a UCI 1.5 to 1.3 status under Simons, Schaal Sels was still just one of dozens of similar races filling out the Belgian calendar. If the race wanted to differentiate itself, it needed a new look.
“Of course it’s fancied these years to have a race that’s different from a classical road race. It’s fashionable,” Nicolaes says. “There are a lot of road races in Belgium, and if you want to survive you have to look for an atypical format that can make a difference between you and the others.”
With the addition of more cobbles and the onverhard, Sels found its unique look. And the creative route has seized on the sport’s current infatuation with dirt, gravel, and other non-traditional racing surfaces. Across the globe, amateur cyclists are flocking to new bicycle races that include alternative surfaces; the pros aren’t immune to the appeal.
“You don’t know what’s going to hit you next — but to be honest you can’t wait because it’s exciting and it’s just plain fun,” Dan Craven (Cycling Academy) gushed on an Instagram post after the 2016 race.
Of course the race’s move off of the tarmac had practical reasons as well, Nicolaes says. Farm roads offer respite from the road furniture that grows more prolific by the year across Europe. He believes the rutted dirt roads are actually safer than the paved streets that are lined with parking meters and barricades.
Heading for the backroads helps avoid figurative roadblocks as well. The sheer number of races in Flanders — big classics like the Tour of Flanders or Scheldeprijs, but also weekly club races, kermesses, and races for U23s and juniors — strains relationships with communities weary of frequent road closures and parking restrictions.
“By changing the track and using a lot of dirt roads, we don’t get into normal traffic, and we don’t annoy people,” Nicolaes says. “I think that this is the future for racing in our country, trying to do races while trying to annoy the minimum of people and employing the minimum of police agents.”
Schaal Sels also moved from Friday to Sunday, putting the race on better footing with the business community on the Bredabaan, the so-called “Champs-Élysées of Merksem” where the race finishes again now that construction is complete.
Two years after its evolutionary leap, Schaal Sels is thriving. The race reduced team size from eight to six riders to boost the action and make room for more teams. In 2016 the race invited 25 teams from nine countries, and had to turn other teams away. The race drew 500,000 live television viewers, despite a total lack of WorldTour teams. A wider international audience tuned in, too, thanks to international live web streaming and an uncommonly modern, multi-language web presence.
“It’s something new in Belgium,” Nicolaes says. “And we’ll keep it this way because we feel it has a high potential.”
Where does the potential lead? The race has set its sights on a UCI 1.HC designation, placing it among the upper tier of Belgian classics, on par with races like Scheldeprijs and Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.
While a jump into the WorldTour may sound inviting, race management is more interested in forging an identity for Schaal Sels. Taking advantage of its September date, management wants to position the race as the narrow edge where road racing meets cyclocross, not an end-of-season Roubaix rematch. As Nicolaes puts it, Schaal Sels is a race where Wout Van Aert can battle Peter Sagan.
WorldTour status would exclude most cyclocrossers, so the jump to the big leagues would destroy that vision. The more flexible 1.HC ranking, however, offers ample late-season points for Pro Continental and WorldTour teams, and allows cyclocross riders to compete. So the Van Aert vs. Sagan battle might not be far off.
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