Niel-ing in the Mud

On a drizzly Saturday morning we drove from Brugge to Niel, Belgium for the latest installment of the GvA Troffee series. Jon's premonition: "It's going to be a real mudder."

The minivan was freshly emblazoned with large stickers reading "Jon Baker" and "Primus Mootry" (compliments of A.J. at Victory Circle Graphics) which made it easier to successfully find, and park in, the Elite Racer parking area. We parked right next to Chris Jones, USA. Once Jon was settled, Dad and I headed out to preview the course. For us, this meant finding the start, the finish, the pits, and, critically, the beer tent. After walking about 200 meters past the finish line, the course turned to greasiest, sludgiest, muddy cow pasture I've ever seen. Good thing we had donned our knee-high rubber boots.

With the beer tent shimmering in the distance like a Belgian oasis, we trudged across the field. Several inordinately large piles of dark substance in the field were decidedly not mud; perhaps one of the cows had a gastrointestinal disorder?

Once arriving at the tent I noticed that right outside was a free port-o-potty; the portable potties at the start/finish were 30 cents. The interior of this single potty was quite clean, probably due to the adjacent 2 banks of open air urinals. Give a man a choice to pee in a tiny closet or under the great gray sky and what you get is a clean toilet seat, yay!

Gathered in this area were some men in red fleece jackets; we later found out they were part of the army required to man a beer tent in the heart of Flanders. They led us inside and introduced us to some other men on Team Beer. We gave them Jon Baker stickers (again, compliments of Victory Circle Graphics) and had a beer. The beer was Duvel, fresh from the bottle, and poured by the expert hand of a real Belgian. By the way, it is pronounced Doo-Full here.

After Jon's warm-up we returned to the pits with his bikes and wheels. As we walked through the swelling Belgian crowds people eyed Jon's bright orange bikes curiously. I gave them stickers. Entering the pits from the opposite side this time, I stepped in what I thought was another shallow mud puddle and sank up to the top of my knee-high boot. Putting a hand out, I barely stopped myself from falling entirely in the mud and it took superhuman toe-flexing to extricate my foot without leaving the boot behind.

Standing in the pit I began fruitlessly wiping my hand with the last section of non-mud covered fleece on my glove... until I spied a Rabobank mechanic filling a bucket at the bike wash. I walked over and extended my soiled hand. This was the moment I will always remember as that time Sven Nys's mechanic gently washed my hand with a high pressure water sprayer. Probably wasn't even Sven's mechanic, but leave me to my delusions.

Cleaned up, I returned to the start area, leaving Dad to his pit duty. With 10 minutes until start I waited with the other soigneurs to take Jon's jacket, leggings, and water bottle. Chris and Jon got punked on their call-up and, after a whole row of juniors and U23's were called, Jon and Chris had to just barge up. Other racers were doing this as well. Not sure what was wrong with the call-up, but someone definitely messed up.

The race proved to be the first of 2 days in which Sven Nys was defeated at the hands of Bart Wellens and Lars Boom. He was covered in the mud rooster-tail spray of someone who has been left in the dust. So much for heros. As for my favorite hero (Breaker Baker, of course), he hit a post about 3/4 of the way into the race and gashed his leg open causing him to drop out. Too bad because he was going strong. He later said that racers had to run about 1/3 of the course because of all the mud. At state championships in Colorado two seasons ago there was some mud; whining could be heard as far as Nebraska.

After the race we rushed to clean bikes and drive up to Pijnacker, Netherlands (pronounced Pie-Nacker- the j is silent). We needed pick up Jon's numbers for the World Cup the next day... but that is another story...