Nazis, Bikes, Newspapers and Antifascists.

The opening race of the opening weekend. This week has that feeling of summer vacation starting when you’re in elementary school. Life sucks now… UAE Tour, Tour Down Under… cool. Y’all are doing great… keep it up. But real racing doesn’t start until it’s cold, wet and cobbled.

The Spring Classics season is one of my favorite times of the year. Exciting racing nearly every weekend and they are the best one-day races of the year. This year I’m going to try and keep up with all the races in the season, and give a little backstory to them. Great way for me to learn the historical points of each races as my appreciation for them grows.

Just like every great bike race in history, our story begins with one newspaper that wanted to throw it down on the table and flex in front of other newspapers.

Het Volk was a Belgian Newspaper that was a more left-wing siding newspaper and published stories about the Nazi engagements in Belgium that other papers refused to publish, most notably in fact was their reporting on the Battle of the Bulge which occurred in the Ardennes forest( editor: Remember this part for my article on Paris-Roubaix… hella interesting!)

During WWII bike racing carried on throughout parts of Europe. Even a World War couldn’t quiet the clickity clacks of gears going down cobbled roads and steep climbs. But it wouldn’t be until 1945 that the first clickety clacks of Omloop Het Nieuwsblad would be heard.

Het Nieusblad was a rival Newspaper of Het Volk and were the organizers of the Tour of Flanders. The same Tour of Flanders that has the infamous distinction of being the only world tour race to be held on Nazi occupied land during the war. Het Nieusblad had been known as a paper that had views that were sympathetic to the Nazi party and Het Volk wasn’t having it.

Omloop Van Vlanderaren as it was called for most of it’s life, began in 1945 to show the Nazis over at Het Niuesblad (at the time.. I’m sure the fine folks over there now are not sympathetic to that scum anymore.) How to put on a bike race and since then it has been a boon for Belgian riders.

Of the just over 70 editions of Omloop Belgians have taken 58 of those races. In the more recent editions, the rest of the world has definitely taken a larger interest in winning these amazing races. Still, as of right now, we have Wout Van Aert and Lotte Kopecky as the two reigning champions of Omloop! In fact, there hasn’t been a Belgian woman on the podium but twice since 2006 in Omloop, and now we have a Belgian woman as a winner for the first time in the race.

Bicycling Magazine

The course leaves Ghent and finishes in Ninove and is known to be hilly and a very tough course. It’s also known for it’s cold, wet and dreary weather and the first race into the Ardennes. But it is fairly new to the world tour as it was only a .1 race up until 2017. And the ironic name change in 2009 to Omloop Het Nieuwsblad didn’t occur until 2009 when the two papers merged. Again… No longer Nazis. Currently it’s used as a primer or warmup for the Tour of Flanders but not in a disrespectful way. The race is a banger.

So yeah, I think Indiana Jones missed out on an opportunity to ride bikes and fight Nazis. Maybe in the next movie, we can get Indy to race Omloop and fight Nazis on bikes. But until then enjoy the Opening Weekend! In the States you are either forced to Tiz, VPN or FLO bikes to watch it… but I’m really stoked to write about these races and especially The Monuments!