How do we ride rollers? Easy, Ghent Wevelgem.

The days are getting a little longer and if you wait until after noon you might be able to sneak in a ride once or twice a week where the temperature reaches a high of 40 degrees.   For us, it’s time to celebrate.    We stay out on our bikes longer, ride with less layers and feel more in touch with the sport we love.   Part of that journey involves climbing out of the doldrums of the basement – that place where we retire and ride the rollers for countless mind numbing hours.   Our record time on the rollers? 3 hours.   3 hours of literally going nowhere, kinda fast.   The one thing that saves us from this horrible self-loathing monotony?   Watching past race coverage from world cycling productions or other cycling related films.   Sometimes we will ride the rollers and catch up on documentaries or NOVA shows from PBS.   Sometimes we’ll watch old movies like the French Connection.    More often than not, though, we’re watching old races and even though we know the outcome and even if we watched it a year prior some of these races inspire us and help us turn over the cranks while sitting on our saddle in a cold, dark and dank place – the antithesis of any cycling ideal landscape.

So a new feature we’re going to launch is reviews of DVDs for roller riding.   Some are good, some are great and some stink, but all of them inspire us.    You might get a laugh out of the old team kits, or maybe even some of the equipment (anyone want a Fassa Bortolo aluminum Pinarello with a carbon rear triangle), but you will also get a reminder of some of the men who were animals and ripped the legs off of the peloton – Ludo Dierckxsens, Julio Perez, these guys might not be on the same lists as Boonen or Pantani, but jeez they were/are strong.

A DVD that should be in anyone's collection.

So at that, here is a review of a race every American cyclist should have in their collection – 2001 Ghent-Wevelgem.    Ghent-Wevelgem is a race that has no where near the notoriety of Paris Roubaix or tour of Flanders.   Heck it was even an anomaly in the sense that it was raced between those two races and while it is a one day race it was raced on Wednesday; not exactly a day known as race day.   For 2010 the race has been changed back to a Sunday and puts it more in line with the top spring classics.   Wednesday or Sunday though the race is no joke, crazy steep uphills, downhills and cobbles.   Sure, we’ve seen them all before, and uphill cobbles are nothing new, but downhill cobbles?   Yea, try going downhill at an over 10% gradient in cobbles, through in some rain and it’s a crash fest that has ruined a rider’s year or even ended their carrier.   In short, it’s a race that doesn’t get it’s due respect.

2001 was a good year and after the two climbs and descents of the Kemmelberg the peloton was split and the lead group was no joke: Hincapie, Zabel, Wesemann, van Bon.   The winner was going to come from the group of lead riders.   One of those riders – our favorite currently-racing american rider: George Hincapie.   Hincapie has been on the precipice of cycling stardom several times, least of all in Paris Roubaix.   Sometimes even though he’s strong and in the lead, he has no hope of winning, sometimes he isn’t aggressive enough, but more often than not the result is he doesn’t win.    Not this day and not this race.   Hincapie races aggressively, takes his pulls, and puts in the attacks.   He rode the race like he owned it and while that’s not always how races are won; to us those are our favorite types of wins.   The victory is a photo finish, which makes it all the more well deserved.   George does himself good, his team good, the sport good and his country good.   We were happy for him and, dare we say, for us.   Our favorite part of the whole film is a fan waving a flag screaming “yea, George, representing Central Park and New York City racing!!!!”    Least we forget this guy who now lives in South Carolina was once a kid and he made a name for himself by traveling from Queens and ripping the legs off the older more experience racers at the weekly races held in the most famous park in the most famous city.   It’s one of the many reasons why we like him so much.

If you like the spring classics, Hincapie or American racing – then the 2001 Ghent-Wevelgem is an absolute must.   You also get something rare in life – something for nothing.   The 2001 Ghent DVd also comes with the 2001 Paris Roubaix – a race of equal historical importance.   We’ll review that next, but do yourself a favor and pick up this DVD.   Come by the shop anytime and we might have it playing on the shop 40″ LCD and Amos can tell you about riding up and down the Kemmelberg and the numerous Kermesse races he did in Belgium that went over the same roads and even raced with some of the same racers.