Edward Walsh: Taking the bumpy road through Belgium

by Edward Walsh

Just my second race of the year and it was arguably the biggest. The Under-23 Tour of Flanders was the first of the UCI Nations cups that I would be tackling with many of my RaceClean teammates suited up for Team Canada. I had been looking forward to this week since I started training for the new season last November. Just a few days before the race we travelled to Oudenaarde to do a reconnaissance of the course. It was exactly what I remembered; steep climbs, narrow roads and of course cobbles. The whole team left Oudenaarde that day very excited.

>> Walsh has some tips for riding the cobbles

The Nations Cups are the most hectic races I have ever done. Crashes are frequent and the fight for position is constant for all 168-km of the Tour of Flanders. Alec Cowan made it into the four-man breakaway while the rest of us tried to stay out of trouble in the peloton behind. Adam Jamieson went down twice throughout the day. Once we had begun the first of two circuits, things quickly went downhill for the team. Adam pulled out along with Alec while Evan Burtnik did an amazing team effort and gave his front wheel to Sean Mackinnon after another rider had put his foot into his front wheel. Quickly I found myself alone in the front group of about 60 riders and still feeling pretty good.

As we approached yet another climb, I was unable to shift my front chainring, the derailleur having jammed while riding one of the harsh cobbled sectors. I tried everything but I was stuck in the big ring, not the end of the world and certainly not worth a bike change in the final of the Tour of Flanders. Bad got worse when I dropped my chain and was forced to dismount to un-jam it. Once I had remounted, I watched as the race split to pieces in front of me. Sean eventually caught me with a little over one lap to go and we chased with everything we had left to get back to the group to no avail. Sean and I finished 64 and 60 respectively. We were very disappointed with the mechanical problems we had throughout the day. Flanders is hard on equipment and many teams were in much worse shape than ours.

Flanders had been a flop for me and I was angry afterwards that a dropped chain had cost me a lead group finish. The next day I decided to line up at a local kermis near our team base in Tielt-Winge. It was a 33 lap, 109-km course. I attacked out of the first corner and didn’t look back until the end of the first lap. Only seven other riders were with me and that was the day’s breakaway. We rode away from the peloton on the very short and technical route building up a healthy gap. With just 5 laps to go the peloton was pulled as we were getting close to lapping them. All my RaceClean teammates were cheering on the side of the road for the last four laps; it was a pretty awesome feeling. There were too many attacks to count on those last few laps and eventually one rider from the Crelan-Vastgoed Service Cyclocross team jumped clear and had a gap. I hesitated then jumped clear myself, I spent the last two kilometres in a drag race with that rider. I got to within 5-meters but he had just enough to hang on for the win, I came in for a healthy second.

I was happy to get some redemption after my problems at Flanders, but still find myself wondering what could have been. On the bright side, I was happy to pick up RaceClean’s first podium. Now we just need to go one step higher.