They call it holy week in Flanders, the week of the cobbled monuments - Tour of Flanders (De Ronde) on the first Sunday in April followed next Sunday by Paris-Roubaix. Only ten riders have won Flanders and Roubaix in the same year, and today’s photo subject Peter Van Petegem is one of them.
It was 2003, Van Petegem’s best year. The strength he’d built, his power on cobbled roads and his ability to peak at the right time came together. He won a bronze medal in the world championships later that year.
Van Petegem was born in the heartland of the Ronde, in Brakel, and he still rides in the Flemish Ardennes. The hills that surround his home define the Tour of Flanders, and he advises anybody who loves cycling to ride here and enjoy.
“It’s gorgeous, I like to leave early in the morning and go into the lanes. The diversity of hills, farms and countryside is incredible. I thought that was the best part when I was training, because I prefer uneven terrain, the hills and the cobblestones,” he once said.
Van Petegem lived for the cobbled classics – In addition to Roubaix he won the Tour of Flanders twice, Het Nieuwsblad three times, the E3 Vlaanderen and Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. Nobody read those races better. He also had a unique style. Van Petegem would often be at the back of the peloton, but always in command, always relaxed. Then when he needed to be he’d at right the front. Just when a split was about to happen.
It was like a sixth sense, and a few years ago Chris asked him how he did it. “Something gets communicated to me at the crucial moments of a race. I feel something, like something is about to happen in the peloton. I don’t know whether it’s just experience, but I don’t think it is, because I’ve always raced this way. It’s difficult to explain, but I can sense something going on when the race changes from its build-up stage to its crucial stage, no matter when that moment is,” he said.
Read more about Van Petegem in the fourth book of our illustrated collection, Cycling Legends 04: Flandriens. Read more here.
