Herk-de-Stad Kermesse Race Report

by James Mattis

First - a Kermesse is not a bike race. It's a party or carnival. The bike race is the entertainment at the Kermesse.

So…Imagine driving to some small town in the middle of the central valley. Not Merced or Modesto, but something small like Snelling. The race promo in Cycle Sprint magazine only tells you the name of the town, the province, and the name of the street the start is located on (Keerne straat), but doesn't provide any additional direction, so there is the standard hunt to find the start. This is made a little more difficult when all you know is English and a smattering of French, and everyone speaks Flemish.

The start was at what looked like a converted fruit stand or packing plant in the middle of some orchards and fields (apples and wheat I think). They had set up little tables and umbrellas and had a little place to buy Braad Worst and Bere and Koffie and Coca-Cola for 1 or 2 euros. Entry fee was 6.50 euros, but you got back 5 euros at the end of the race when you returned your jersey number and frame number.

As we were signing on (and yes you had to sign on like at a stage race or big one day event) there seemed to be the standard collection of Belgian bike racing fans drinking beer, eating sausages, and smoking. It always seems strange to me to see people watching a sport that emphasizes fitness smoking so much. Of course, it seems like everyone smokes in Belgium. I think I've seen 12 year olds lighting up on the way home from school.

Anyway, I had been warned before the start of this race to watch out for a few riders - in particular one guy wearing a hideous yellow and pink jersey (I think Ben Stafford could make a good business designing jerseys for the teams out here - most of them make me instinctively gag and feel like puking). Since there is no drug control at all at these types of races, apparently many riders preferred method of training involves injecting oneself in the ass with big syringes loaded with gallons of spiffy-cool, performance enhancing chemicals. Apparantly the guy in the pink and yellow jersey was particularly infamous for his use of this method of training, and wins a ton of Kermesses. Everyone (except me) seemed to know who he was, and it seems he's almost as well known as Museeuw over here.

I really didn't know what to expect as I lined up for this race. I had the good fortune to flat 10 minutes before the start, which was just long enough to get a wheel change and get all my bad luck out of the way. Good thing too since there are never follow cars at these races. Flat and your done - head to the showers. I had a good chance to talk with Mike Taylor via telephone the day before the race (Mike is spending a year over here racing in Belgium after racing the past few seasons with Lombardi Sports), and he told me that you really needed to be passive-aggressive during the race. You want to make every breakaway or split, but then not work them.

It was pretty sage advice.

I got a truly miserable position on the start line. Everyone was trying the old back-in-to-the-front-of-the-starting-line-by-getting-to-the-start-line-at-the-last-second trick. I was too, but they wouldn't start the race until everyone was lined up, so I finally got bored and went and lined up near the back next to some Quickstep riders (probably on the TT3 squad).

The gun sounded, and I quickly tried to work my way up to the front of the race. There is only one tactic in this sort of event: go hard. There are no team tactics. It was a pretty tight, technical course. There was a short bump after the start/finish with 3 corners after that withing 100 m. There was also a section that might have been a bike path. It was less than a car lane wide, but had a center stripe painted on it. The pavement was pretty good, though about a third of the course was that annoying concrete slab. Mercifully, there were no cobbles and only a couple of sections of smooth, brick cross-walks.

After 4 laps (each lap was 6.8 kms, and we were racing 17 laps for a total of 116 kms), I finally made it up to the front. It takes time to work your way through 200 riders when the front of the pack is 30 seconds up the road. I didn't think that the pace was too terribly fast, but it was taking a while to surf through everyone. There were actually 6 Kermesses today in Belgium (its some sort of national holiday), so the strong riders were spread out everywhere. Some probably racing in De Panne, some (like Mike Taylor) racing in Boogarden nearly Halle and Brussles.
Once at the front I followed every little twitch of an attack, then went really, really, really hard through the narrow bike path section to bridge up to four riders dangling about 30 seconds up the road. I've been feeling very fast recently with no big results to show for it…

Three riders came across with me, and another 5 followed shortly after that to make a group of 13. There was a Quickstep rider, a Flander I-Team Nova rider, some super strong Russian national team kid, but not Mssr. Dopage. The 13 of us rotated through smoothly for the next 10 laps as we slowly prized open a minute gap on whatever was left of the pack. It was hot (31C or 87 F) so I figured the poor Belgians were wilting in the heat behind.

With 3 laps to go, attacks started going off and our little group started to splinter. First there was 6 or us, and then only 3 with two laps to go. To make matters worse, I could see the peloton starting to catch us. I was pretty much in the "just screw it" mode at this point, and was taking quadruple pulls in the group of three (which still include the Quickstep rider). I figured we were hozed though. Then, much to my good fortune, two riders bridged the gap just after the start/finish line with one lap to go, and added some much needed horsepower (Chevals in French) to our break, and soon the pack was just a distant memory. They were probably starting to play those last lap "you chase," "no you chase" games.

I lead our small group through the final two corners and onto the finishing straight with about 1 km just slightly uphill to the line. Our group was starting to play games and look at each other and they gave me a 5 m gap at one point just before the final corner. The Quikstep rider launched a big attack just after the final corner, and I really struggled to get on his wheel. I had been cramping on the last lap, and my snap, acceleration, and sprint were pretty much toast. I finally got on his wheel rather painfully with about 250 m to go, and then just clicked down into my 54x11 and kept on going with my legs having all-sorts of cool electrical misfires, seizures, and painful twinges…I thought the two riders who bridged on the last lap looked really strong and should be able come around me, but neither of them did. Its really nice to have a 54x11 when you are cramping and have no suppleness left in your legs 'cuz you can still go pretty fast if you can mash that monster gear over.