Videos of the day: Freddy's Ghent-Wevelgems

While we're on the theme of being 'much more than a sprinter', here's a bit of an hors-d'oeuvre for Sunday's upcoming Gand-Wevelgem, wielersuppporters:  Freddy Maertens slaying the greatest in 1975 and 1976.  


Yesterday we woke to a light snow dusting here in Rhode Island.  Winter is going out kicking and screaming.  A scheduled hour and a half of power intervals shifted indoors on the trainer for me though, so deduct 10 flahute points from my season total.  Suffering a-bloc inside still counts though, doesn't it?

The Gent-Wevelgem1975 race (short clip below) was held just during/after a similar snowstorm, with the peloton racing over the Kemmelberg.   Descending the cobbled Kemmel after a coating of snow?   One shudders to think about doing that.  In recent years they debated taking it out of the course completely cited as too dangerous...even with radios ;)    How'd they do it back in 1975?  Maybe those old steel bikes and spoked wheels handled better over the rough stuff.   Or is it that flemish paperboys learn how to ride in the snow?   A little of both, I think.


Freddy's repeat 1976 win was against a break of all the royalty of seventies cycling:  Merckx, Moser, Kuiper, Thurau, Dierickx.   Good sprinter lesson on positioning in the final k.

A guy named 'wielerhelden' just put a bunch of clips, a sort of 'Freddy Maertens greatest hits collection' up on you tube.   If you like these two, you can check more of them out here.

Comments

  1. That's a period of time when men were men - still exciting to watch even though I don't understand one word :)

    ReplyDelete

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