The Muur van Geraardsbergen (affectionately known as Kapelmuur, or simply the Muur) is back in the Ronde van Vlaanderen, ending the hand-wringing that became a rite of spring ever since the climb was cut from the course in 2012.
The Muur is, of course, unchanged from its last appearance, when Fabian Cancellara and Sylvain Chavanel tried and failed to hold off the chase on the lower slopes, opening the door for Nick Nuyens’s unlikely win. It is still a kilometer of cobblestones with 19 percent pitches, topped by a church and a stone wall that will be packed with fans on April 2. The Muur is intransigent. The Ronde, though, has evolved, as its owner, Flanders Classics, seeks to modernize and strengthen the monument and the races that surround it.
From 1988 until 2011 the Muur was the Ronde’s penultimate climb, and often its decisive obstacle. This year, the peloton will hit the Muur 95 kilometers from the finish. If Flanders Classics CEO Wouter Vandenhaute’s vision comes to pass, the repositioned Muur will deliver the first real selection, not the last.
“We have focused everything on the final with the new series of hills, the new rhythm,’” says race director Wim Van Herreweghe, explaining the Muur’s new placement. “We didn’t want to have it as the first hill after 60 or 80 kilometers, but wanted it to have sporting value.”
While it may come early in the men’s race, the Muur is now the centerpiece for the other races being held that day. Flanders Classics believes this will make the Muur a spectator destination, as well as a cash cow.
The junior Ronde van Vlaanderen passes through Geraardsbergen four times before climbing the Muur and finishing back in town just after noon. The elite women arrive an hour later, hitting the Muur 94 kilometers into a 153-kilometer route that starts and ends in Oudenaarde. There’s an hour to grab another beer or two before the elite men arrive around 2:30 p.m., and once they’re gone, the crowd can watch the finish via jumbotron. VIP packages for the Muur were sold out by January.
When Flanders Classics took over the Ronde, it concentrated the action on prime locations such as the Paterberg and Koppenberg in an effort to generate revenue. Those changes weren’t immediately welcome. Traditionalists recoiled in 2012 when Flanders Classics moved the finish to Oudenaarde from Meerbeke-Ninove, where it had been since 1973. The new finish features a series of three loops through the hill zone. Fans recoiled further when ownership erected huge VIP tents and corporate hospitality atop the Oude Kwaremont.
Under the new model, management sold tickets to these spectating zones, ranging from €200 for club access at the finish to €4,000 for a day in a VIP car. Champagne lunches for the well-heeled or well-connected are nothing new in Belgian cycling, but this was a new era in a sport that has long prided itself on free admission.
The outcry subsided when the new format delivered dramatic racing. In 2012, the finale came down to a game of cat-and-mouse between Tom Boonen, Alessandro Ballan, and Filippo Pozzato, with Boonen taking the win. Exciting races followed in subsequent years. Last year, Peter Sagan attacked on the final ascent of the Paterberg and soloed to victory despite the combined chase of Cancellara and Sep Vanmarcke.
The return of the Muur isn’t the only change for 2017; organizers moved the start from Bruges to Antwerp. Initially, money also appeared to be the reason for the switch. Antwerp paid €400,000 for the privilege, double what Bruges was paying. Vandenhaute and Bruges mayor Renaat Landuyt agree that Bruges would have matched the price given the opportunity. Antwerp’s longstanding interest and the desire for a fresh route tipped the balance.
“I think Wouter Vandenhaute just decided for himself that it would be Antwerp,” a dejected Landuyt told Het Nieuwsblad. “He sat for some time with a different course in his head. It is true that he did not let it come to a bid.”
Van Herreweghe confirms what Landuyt believes: This is the director’s choice.
“Sometimes you change the departure,” says Van Herreweghe. “It was 20 years in Bruges, it was 20 years in Sint-Niklaas, it was a lot of years in Gent in the beginning of the Tour of Flanders. It will still [generate] the same passion in the headlines of the papers about the Tour of Flanders.”
The Ronde is not the only of Flanders Classics’s races to be renovated. Omloop Het Nieuwsblad’s finish was moved from the bland outskirts of Gent to its café-lined student district. This year, organizers added dirt farm roads to Gent-Wevelgem, a decision organizers insist is not a nod to the growing popularity of races like Schaal Sels and Tro-Bro Léon.
Flanders Classics has also helped drag the Flemish classics into the 21st century, adding elite women’s events to Dwars door Vlaanderen and Gent-Wevelgem and strengthening the existing women’s Ronde and Omloop. It has also created a centralized, trilingual website for all the races, launched a mobile app, embraced social media, and created modern, coordinated branding.
Most importantly, though, Flanders Classics has retooled the calendar, moving its once-independent races to create a more logical progression through the cobbled classics. In 2010, it moved Gent-Wevelgem from its mid-week slot to the Sunday before the Ronde, giving it the weekend prestige many fans felt it deserved. The lower-tier Scheldeprijs moved into Gent-Wevelgem’s old spot, offering the cobbled specialists a chance to keep their legs sharp between the Ronde and Paris-Roubaix on a less challenging course.
Flanders Classics then moved Brabantse Pijl from the spot now occupied by Gent-Wevelgem into the Scheldeprijs’s old spot between Roubaix and the Amstel Gold Race, where it forms a perfect symbolic bridge between the Flemish classics and the Ardennes. Starting in Leuven in the Flemish Brabant east of Brussels, Brabantse Pijl jumps back and forth across the Flanders-Walloon border six times in its 203 kilometers, stitching together the two disparate halves of the northern classics season.
The final move in Flanders Classics’s calendar maneuverings won’t come until 2018, when Dwars Door Vlaanderen moves from the Wednesday before Gent-Wevelgem to the Wednesday after it. With that final piece in place, Flanders Classics will own the Flemish season opener, its finale and, most importantly, a compelling, unbroken block of racing stretching from Gent-Wevelgem through Scheldeprijs — the beating heart of the classics season.
Beyond the borders, Flanders Classics’s consolidation of the northern classics scene is securing valuable leverage for Belgian cycling at a time when the UCI and race organizers are struggling for control of the sport. There is speculation that the UCI granted WorldTour status to the independent E3 Harelbeke to help counteract the Flanders Classic hegemony in Belgium, though it is worth noting that the UCI elevated Dwars to the WorldTour this season.
Most tellingly, though, in the November press release announcing that organizers had declared new team size limits for top races, Flanders Classics was listed alongside organizational behemoths ASO and RCS. In trying to secure the future of Belgian racing, a seat at that table might be the most important achievement of all.
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