first: the route.  This is the Netherlands, in the province of Drenthe.  It is FLAT, with hints of glacial morraine.  The start/finish was a (the?) main street in the little village of Gieten.  

After a brief paved straightaway, racers go over a little dirt speedbump onto a dirt path,

From Gieten Superprestige

Follow along on the flip!

then cross a brick path (notice large inflatable rabo jersey)

back onto dirt, along asphalt, onto dirt and grass.  After that, there's a modest hill (perhaps 3-5%), and the route wiggles up and down that hill like a kid's board game. 

Next, a nice narrow turn drops them onto a road, then UP the other side.  (This is where we stayed for photo purposes.)  After that, there's a brick path...

up to a contorted figure 8 where they have built a "hill" out of two ramps,

and routed the path over them, but also under them.  (Visualize Hot Wheels tracks, here.)  Next, they crest the hill, by the beer tent.

The team people are downtown.  Serious-faced men in caps, with faces that would fit right in at a horse-race track, are speaking with marked Belgian accents--low and intensely to each other, loudly and expressively to passing cars and into cell phones.  Out along the course, we see TV cameras EVERYWHERE, a full barrier system, and professional course monitors, and lots of professional touches.  The pros mostly have two bikes each, which they trade off at the powerwash station whenever the dirt gets problematic.  By a few laps into the race, many of the bikes are suddenly, startlingly cleaner than the riders themselves.  When a root is unearthed and cut loose by churning wheels, an observant course monitor rushes out between clumps of riders to yank it out of the way, lest it get in anyone's spokes.  It's a very civilized version of filthy, exhausting "fun."  

At the top of the hill, there is a large outdoor TV screen, a giant beer tent playing Euro-pop and middle-of-the road hits of the 70's (suddenly trendy again?) and a herring stand which effectively stops our course reconnoiter until it's time for the race to start.  The inside of the beer tent seems to be off-limits to TV cameras, and there's not much else to film along the course between races, so one of the bored, Belgian TV cameramen is delighted to take a picture of the Podium Cafe "Get well" sign.  "You were on live TV in Belgium" he calls to us, and we're pretty thrilled.

The weather is mud, with a background of freezing fog early on, a brief touch of sleet, and then some pellet-like snow.  The ground, however, does not get anywhere close to freezing.  The pasture (that's what it is the rest of the year) is well-supplied with cow flops of recent and runny character.  (That's true for the spectator areas, at least.  Were they ceremoniously removed from the course itself by a serious-faced flop-removal team, or merely ground into the rest of the glacial clay and rich loam by the wheels of the women and juniors?  Come early yourself, next year, and find out.)  For you actual cross racers, I'd describe the mud quality as "the sort that a kid could happily squish between his or her toes for hours, on a warm summer day."  Fluffier than clay, but very nearly as fine-grained, with some extra, organic sticking power.  All mingled with slick, 8 inch long wet grass.

Mysteriously, it's very easy to see sunlight at the race.  One has only to look at the giant TV screen, where the magic of the TV cameras has somehow cast a golden glow on the entire scene.  Wouldn't it be nice if they could run the process in reverse?  (Ah, but then, it wouldn't be cross.)  The Mayor declares, afterwards, that the weather this year was much better than last year--but last year was absolutely horrible.

We missed the Juniors race and newbies / women's race.  (A real slap in the face for women, they are sent off two minutes after the "newbies."  If you're a fantastic woman cross racer, you get to fight through the dregs of the never-evers.  If you're on the weak end of the women's field, you get the fastest and most driven of the newbies charging through your field.  As for the newbies?  It's presumably just as dangerous for them as it is for the women.)

We made the last 20 minutes of the "U23 / hot young talents" (Beloften) race.  A lot of determination on show.  At least one of them was too frozen to his bike at the end to clip out, and collapsed, still attached.  Many others were nearly as far gone.  Motherly women (probably their mothers) ran out to get jackets and warmup pants onto uncooperative limbs.  Tom Meeusen, the Belgian U23 champ, was cornered by a media dude with more cameras and lenses than Sui, and managed to strike a nonchalant pose.  The podium included a first-time podium success for Petrus (a Czech), who got particular applause.  (There are quite a few Czechs and Poles and Swiss in the lower ranks... instead of camper vans, their team cars seem to be the family car, with a rack on the back and a decal on the hood.)  A near-crash of riders and moms and spectators happened when two local fellows, well back in the pack, came in together in a dead sprint with almost no brakes.  (Guys, today the race ends at the flags, not the sign at the end of the road.) The announcer, with foresight and insight, told everyone to make a channel for locals "coming in hot."  Podium: Van Compernolle (BE-Sunweb); Mitchell Huenders (NL-Asisto); Lubomir Petrus (CZ-Palmans).  

The main race:

Missing Lars Boom, the Rabo guys sent (allowed? produced?) a rabbit in the early laps (De Knegt, I think).  I counted him about 10 seconds up on the field on the 1st lap, and still going strong on the 2nd lap.  Groenendaal (#7) was at or near the front for a few laps at the beginning, but then something mysterious happened.  Apparently something bad enough to send him to the end of the "top-20," and also bad enough so that, at the end of the race, he turned around at the finish, and rode away from the reporters, as they called his name and ran after him.

By the 4th or 5th lap, the contenders were sorting themselves out, and the "hares" were dropping back: the order through "our" spot was Klaas Vantornout (#5), Sven Nys (#2, name mis-spelled in the program, a nice touch!) and Bart Wellens (#3) [and another view to spare]--the contenders--then De Knegt (#6), Christian Heule (#27) and Dieter Vanthourenhout (#16).  Two laps later, it was Vantornout, large gap, Bart Wellens, small gap, Sven Nys, large gap, then a group of 14, and a couple of stragglers, then a long gap to the also-rans.  Due to mishaps, the precise lead switched a few times, but the eventual top 3 remained the same.  At one point Vantornout stopped or crashed, and the announcers were screaming and shouting--een Drama, for sure--but Wellens was not able to pass.  There was also a lot of hand-wringing over Nys's incredible closing speed--would he be close enough on the final, paved straightaway to steal the race?  But this was not to be.  In fact, Nys spent the race looking very choppy and frenetic, and a bit worn down.  Maybe that's just his style, or maybe he would also benefit from a UTI and a couple of weeks off the circuit. (No, I do NOT wish that on anyone.)

Final podium:  Vantornout, Wellens, Nys. 

A bunch of Vervecken fans (red jackets--cheering for Nys?  For Vantournout?) joined the Bart and Geert Wellens fans (navy blue jackets) in standing on the base of the barriers.  The Flemish Lion flags were flying as the snow pellets pinged down and the light faded.

Honorable mentions: if determination alone won these things, take a look at the face of Geert Wellens.  Teams: Fidea got 5 times the mentions of any other team.  Nys had the ultimate tour bus.  Bikes: we saw a lot of "different" bike brands, most of them really re-branded Ridleys (or so said the guys washing them after the race).  Here are a couple of them.  (Can I say, I really regret missing the kids race?)

P.S. the local hotel, the Braams, fed us royally and housed us nicely for relatively little money. The windmill next door is very scenic.  You can bike in a day to 3 or 4 sets of prehistoric ruins, or "hunebed."  Bike rentals at the train station in Assen are ~$9 a day--and the hotel has bikes too.  Finally, if we'd really had our act together, we could have caught the end of a 6-day race in Zuidlaren.