Superprestige #1 – Ruddervoorde

Today is the day of sketchy transport experiences. The oncoming mega-storm and the wind that was bringing it made the landing at Brussels in our tiny, commuter jet a rather scary experience. They say the smaller the plane the easier it gets thrown around. Well, we were thrown around aplenty.

Then, about 12 hours later, while crossing the channel on a ferry, the boat was properly moving up and down, there must have been quite big waves. I’ve done a few channel crossings on ferries but I’ve never experienced anything like this before. Of course, this has happened on the one weekend i wasn’t using the Eurotunnel.

Oh, about the race. Not one of my favourites. In many ways. The course is rather uninspiring, the organisers calendar coup didn’t warm my heart towards the race and then I fell victim of my own hubris.

I thought it was going to be easy and I was quite happy with what snapped during the U23 race, so I wasn’t worried about the elite men’s race. But it just wasn’t going to happen today. I wanted to photograph a bike swap, so I jogged over to the material post after the start, only to waste a lap and a half, without anybody changing a bike.

Then they announced that there’s only 6 laps left and that was when the panic started. It just didn’t happen today. The icing on the cake was when I missed the finish. Well, I got there on time-ish, but I ended up on the wrong side of the course and an overenthusiastic marshall wasn’t going to let me get to the other side of the course, thus pretty much missing out on most of Klaas Vantornout’s winning celebration.

Lesson learnt, now I’m looking forward to Friday and visiting the mighty Koppenberg. Strictly via the Channel Tunnel.

You can still buy my photo book about the 2012/2013 cyclocross season.