Preview: Dwars door de Westhoek

by Monty. on Jul 18, 2010 4:21 AM EDT in Women's Cycling

Sunday 18th July

Here’s a little oddity for you. It’s July right now, so in biking terms that’s the season of sunflowers, stage races, and Ben Stiller. Yet in that little remote corner of Belgium known as de Westhoek they are putting on a one day race complete with bergs and small narrow dangerous descents. It’s like having a second Christmas in May because you don’t want to wait a whole year. And why not.

There’s something very satisfying about how race organisers in Belgium understand the internet, demonstrated perfectly by the organisers of the Dwars door de Westhoek. You want to promote a race? OK, start with a website and put everything there. So that’s a course map pointing out clearly where you can stock up on bananas, a route planner highlighting the dangerous sections, a map of the start area complete with marked routes between the various areas, and a brief summary of the location of the bergs that you can cut out and put on your handlebars. All of those are downloadable pdfs, but if you’d prefer a Word version then they offer a that too. Everything you could ever want to know about the race in one central place.

image via www.sportsites.be

The course itself is pretty straightforward. At 14:30 CET it leaves from the centre of the village of Boezinge, just north of Ieper/Ypres, loops out to the west and south of Ieper for 70km passing over five bergs, then returns to Boezinge for seven laps of a 9.5km circuit for a total race distance of 127km. Here from the routebook are the five bergs, complete with the distance into the course they are, their lengths, surfaces, average and maximum gradients.

17.20 Rodenberg 1700 m Asfalt 4.8 % 13 %
23.30 Monteberg 1000 m Asfalt 7 % 13 %
28.60 Nieuwkerke Dorp 750 m Asfalt 5 % 5 %
32.70 Kraaiberg 500 m Asfalt 3.3 % 7 %
34.80 Mesenberg 500 m Asfalt 6 % 6 %

The website also includes a list of the teams riding, plus a downloadable startlist (word doc), although the latter is possibly not so reliable (I doubt that Rochelle Gilmore will be making an overnight dash from Italy to be here, and some of the other names there are out in Turkey riding the U23 championships). Watch out for names from the big teams, I guess, especially those putting on their shiny new national champions kits su7c as Loes Gunnewijk of Nederland Bloeit. Swedish champion Emma Johansson and Marianne Vos don’t appear on the start list, and Leontien.nl don’t have any riders listed. A good outside bet would be Sara Mustonen of Hitec UCK, and surely some here will be looking forward to how the Horizon Fitness team cope.

No sign of any video as yet, but I would expect at the very least to see some home-shot clips appear on You Tube soon after the race ends.

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I'm excited, as this is Horizon's professional debut

Horizon being the UK-based team run by Stef Wyman (who was involved in Vision One) with an aiming of nurturing young British talent – although the aims are much bigger than that, and include expanding women’s road racing in the UK (currently you really have to relocate to Belgium/Netherlads for the racing season, as there’s almost nothing here)

They’ve had a good start as well – Dani King especially has had some great results in the Dutch/Belgian day races – and their star rider is Sarah Storey, who is massively inspirational. She started her career as a Paralympian, at 15, winning, well, pretty much everythig. She moved to cycling after she had to give up swimming because of multiple ear infections, and has won a lot of track cycling golds, Worlds, records etc. Last year, her Paracycling Worlds Ind Pursuit time would have seen her placed 8th in the (non-Paras) World Champs. She’s now moving to the non-Paras side of the sport (not exactly helped by British Cycling it seems – I can only assume that because of their funding set-up, it suits them to have her winning everything on the Paras side…) and I’d love to see her on the track and on the roads more.

Horizon is my favourite bonkers-ambition project out there. This year they persuaded the British Tour Series (a series of city centre Crits that actually get tv coverage etc!) to include a women’s race as part of the Stoke round, and I can’t wait to see their plans for next year. Plus their website is my favourite ridiculous thing in cycling – fabulous rider blogs and connections with fans, but it really is a wordpress blog! Apparetly a shiny new one will materialise, but it’s a lovely little touch of comedy, that also reminds me how much they have to fight to get women’s road cycling taken seriously over here

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 4:57 AM EDT reply actions

Is Sarah Storey riding?

her twitter doesn’t make it sound so. And a few other twitter accounts from the Horizon women: Helen Wyman, Annabel Simpson and Alex Greenfield. Plus DS Stefan Wyman and team twitter.

by Monty. on Jul 18, 2010 5:11 AM EDT up reply actions

Plus one other account that might update during the race

Canadian Road Cycling

by Monty. on Jul 18, 2010 5:14 AM EDT up reply actions

actually, you're right, she's probably not

But to be fair, I did fluff over that in my comment! ;-)

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 5:15 AM EDT up reply actions

I hope Stef follows Manel’s lead, & tweets like a madman throughout the race!

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 5:16 AM EDT up reply actions

He is doing! Go Stef!

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 11:11 AM EDT up reply actions

It's all Blossoming!

Liesbet de Vocht, Belgian National Champion and the only non-Dutch member of Nederland Bloeit, wins the race! Red Sun’s Petra Dijkman 2nd

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 12:05 PM EDT reply actions

(I think it’s Ned Bloeit Suzanne de Goede & Loes markerink in 3rd & 4th, but seen different redulsts – Redsun’s Emma Johansson in 5th)

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 12:29 PM EDT up reply actions

Here's the top 10

1 Liesbet DE VOCHT (BEL) ARC 3:16:52
2 Petra DIJKMAN (NED) RSC +41
3 Suzanne DE GOEDE (NED) ARC +2:22
4 Loes MARKERINK (NED) ARC +2:22
5 Emma JOHANSSON (SWE) RSC +2:22
6 Sara MUSTONEN (SWE) HPU +2:22
7 Grace VERBEKE (BEL) LLT +2:22
8 Jolien D’HOORE (BEL) VLL +2:22
9 Monique VAN DE REE (NED) LNL +2:22
10 Nathalie LAMBORELLE (LUX) HPU +2:22

via Radsport (teams are only listed for riders on UCI registered teams).

Liesbet de Vocht’s name got struck from my preview when I remembered that she’s been riding in her Belgian champs jersey for a while already (I still miss being able to pick out Ludi Henrion so easily). Good that l’Aude didn’t kill off Monique van Ree, and that Nathalie Lamborelle is over her deep vein thrombosis.

A few of the Horizon women for pigeons:

32 Alexandra GREENFIELD (GBR) +2:22
35 Claire THOMAS (GBR) +2:22
49 Helen WYMAN (GBR) +2:22

everyone else in the race finished in a big bunch behind the two leaders. And I wonder if 41 Eefje TABAK (NED) +2:22 is related to Bloeit rider Noortje Tabak who won the U23 European champs race yesterday.

by Monty. on Jul 18, 2010 3:37 PM EDT reply actions

I wondered that

when they were both showing in the Dutch/Belgian crits

Also, is Annelies Visser relates to Adrie Visser?

(Thanks for the Horizon updates, Monty!)

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 3:48 PM EDT up reply actions

Dunno, but Visser is a very common name

Tabak on the other hand is not, and the two first names seem like they could be given by the same parents, I mean not similar but in the same vein.

Ceci n'est pas une signature.

by tedvdw on Jul 18, 2010 3:54 PM EDT up reply actions

Those names did sound a bit obscure, even though the only Dutch I know comes from reading about bike races

Is there some theme there? Stations of the compass? Dutch mythology? Is there such a thing as Dutch mythology?

by Monty. on Jul 18, 2010 3:57 PM EDT up reply actions

Ah no, Eefje/Noortje are normal/common enough

but not with a common theme, that I can figure out. They just have a bit of the same feel.

Ceci n'est pas une signature.

by tedvdw on Jul 18, 2010 4:42 PM EDT up reply actions

Visser is common?

Ah well, one day I’ll learn more!

The nearest I get is when I was a kid and we lived in Spain, my rother’s best friend was from the Netherlands, and called Tjerk….

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 4:13 PM EDT up reply actions

ps

Deep Vein Thrombosis????

by Sarah Connolly on Jul 18, 2010 4:14 PM EDT up reply actions

Yup

she wrote about it on her website. That’s down right now but if you look at the Google cached version she talks about health problems, but the specifics aren’t on that page. Her site should work again tomorrow; it looks like the hosting service is down as I can’t get to the Fenixs website or Suzie Godart’s either.

by Monty. on Jul 18, 2010 4:23 PM EDT up reply actions