Chasing Races - Part 3 (Scheldeprijs)

During the spring classic season, there big races are on a Sunday. In the middle of the week they run a semi-classic. The UCI had re-structure the calendar a bit this year and the mid-week slot was held down by Scheldeprijs which is run in and around Antwerp. Named for the Schelde River that runs through the start city of Antwerp, Scheldeprijs (Flemish pronunciation “Skeld-eh-presse”) translates to “Schelde Tropy,” and it’s known as the Belgian championship for sprinters. The break always gets caught on the finishing circuits and it is a sprint finish. The plan was to meet up with the SoCar Posse and drive up to Antwerp together. However, a wrong turn put us 3 minutes behind schedule heading over to their hotel and we quickly learned that the SoCar Posse leaves on-time and waits for no one.

No big deal..... Antwerp was straight up the highway and how hard could it be to find a big-ass bike race. Turns out.... pretty hard. We got to the outskirts of Antwerp and started navigating our way to the city center on the assumption that the race start would be there. After 15 minutes of driving through the city and not seeing a single bike race related sight, concerns began to grow. Then just as we were coming up to an intersection, to motorcycle police block both sides of the street that was to cross our path. Just about the time Dash said "what is this for" we see the Quickstep team bus heading in the direction opposite of us under police escort with the BMC bus right behind it. The solidified in my mind that Tom Boonen is the true King of Belgium. Dude gets a police escort for this team bus to get to the race.

Dash and I are screaming "Go! Go! Go!" in Rich's ear to encourage him to make an illegal u-turn right in the middle of the street. Rich promptly jumps the VW Golf over the median and we are off in pursuit. It is pretty impressive how fast two team buses can go through a city when they are under police escort. Before long, we get caught up behind a light and lose them. Rich takes a couple turns, races down some narrow streets and BAM! we come out right next to the plaza where there race start is. The legend of Rich "Pigeon" Visscher is solidifed at this time.

So, without further pontification on my part, lets go to the pictures.


Rich Hincapie and some of the SoCar posse. OK, they are not all from SoCar, the gent on the left is John from Utah. He drew the lucky straw and got to ride in one of the BMC team cars for the day.

Unlike the start of the Tour of Flanders which was fenced off. The start area for Scheldeprijs is wide open and you can walk any and every where. Early on, we walked over to the Team SKY guys. This is a serious big-budget team. Team Sky Team Bus has been the subject of many articles. The other toys they have are equally impressive. Pinarello Dogmas complete with custom blue colored SRM computers.

Sky Team cars are Jaguar XType wagons... each with custom plates.


The team truck is a Benz...... note the driver position..... Yes, Team Sky is a British team.

Dash chatted up Tyler Farrar a bit. Tyler was sporting a sweet faux-hawk for the day. He said he was feeling pretty good. He went on to show that 6 hours later by winning.

We wandered back over to the BMC bus where George Hincapie made his appearance. Here, George and Rich's dad Ricardo looks on as we make fun of how long George's hair is.


This is Turtle. His real name is Jeremy, but everyone just calls him Turtle. Turtle is George Hincapie's personal soigneur. (Note: For the non-bike geeks who read this blog, a soigneur is an assistant who is responsible for feeding, clothing, and escorting riders. They also massage riders after the race.) Turtle has been George Hincapie's personal soigneur for several years and probably knows nearly as much about George as George's wife Melanie. Below, he is explaining to us that he has to drive the car that day because the normal driver Chris got busted for speeding while trying to skip ahead of the race at the Tour of Flanders. Evidently there were alot of team cars that fell to this same fate at the race.

This be Chris. He is from Belgium which make the fact that he got busted speeding in his home country a bit more painful. In Belgium, if you are going fast enough, they take your license on the spot. Chris lost his for 14 days. I never got him to tell me what the fine was. I asked Turtle what he does as an American when he gets caught speeding in other countries. He response.."Simple, I just hand them my Concealed Weapons Permit Card. They never know what the hell to do with that."

Rich and Rich looking at the course map and plot the day.

They snagged George's race manual so that we could see where we wanted to view the finishing circuits (After a big 120 mile loop out around Antwerp, the race ends with 3 laps around the course below.) Somehow, George's race manual ended up in my messenger bag. You can guess how bummed I was about that.

Chris gave us the scoop on where to watch the race and the racers all headed out for the day. We had several hours to kill in Antwerp so we spent it in search of more Belgian beers and Tom Shane. We then headed over to the finishing circuits. It took a bit of walking to get there, but we got to the area Chris pointed us to. I was a high speed cobbled decent. These cobbles were as smooth as cobbles get in Belgium. But when the peleton was blowing down this road at 40+ mph, it is still impressive.

Rich, setting up the "Digger-Cam" for some low level footage.

This is what the group looked like on the first lap.

After the peleton passed we ran into these guys. They had a sweet portable setup where they could get the live TV broadcast of the race. In between the times when the race was coming by, we walked over and watched it on TV with them. Before long extra bottles of wine were opened and shared by all. The Belgians are truly nice people. Not only do the share their wine with American strangers, the were truly complementary when an American,Tyler Farrer, beat the Tom Boonen in the sprint.