Flanders, less than half of a small country, has a huge place in cycling. The best Flemish cyclists are often called Lions of Flanders, this story is about the first.
Take the world’s biggest bike race, the Tour de France. Only France has won it more often than Belgium, and only France has more stage winners. France is a huge country, and the majority of Belgian Tour and stage winners come from the region of Flanders.
In fact the first ever Belgian Tour stage winner, Cyrille Van Hauwaert was not only from Flanders, he is often referred to nowadays as the first ever Lion of Flanders.
Although way back in 1909 when he won that first stage, French cycling fans and press didn’t refer to Flemish cyclists, no matter how good they were, in quite such heroic terms. They still respected them, though.
Flahutes
Riders like Van Hauwaert were called Flahutes in France. The word was previously used to describe the long cloth bags labourers carried their food to work in. The bags were secured on their backs by two shoulder loops, a bit like rucksacks are today.
Many Belgian labourers were employed on a day to day basis, and they rode old bikes or tramped around Flanders and Northern France looking for their next job. A baguette and maybe a bottle of cold coffee in their Flahute bags to sustain them. They were a tough breed, and Flahute was meant in admiration not insult.
Van Hauwaert was the son of a brick-maker from Moorslede in West Flanders. Like so many kids an old bike gave him freedom to explore, and later it became the way he make his mark in the world.
He became a tough competitor, but Van Hauwaert had the soul of a poet. Many cyclists have, inside a hard shell maybe, but the soul is there nonetheless.
Autobiography
Van Hauwaert wrote an autobiography when he stopped racing, and this passage from it will resonate with anybody who’s discovered the joy and freedom of exploring the countryside by bike.
He recalls setting off on his bike one day in his mid-teens to visit the nearby town of Turnhout. Once there Van Hauwaert saw it was the same distance again to Bruges, so he pressed on.
After enjoying beautiful Bruges, a city sometimes called the Venice of the North because of its extensive canal network, the adventurous young lad carried on west, captivated by his bike, into an area he didn’t know. He describes what he saw there like this.
“The road climbed, and on top of a small hill I saw ahead of me the vast green plain of the sea, which merges far in the distance with the blurred line of the horizon. Our neighbours had told me about the sea, but I had never seen it. I was so proud that my little bike had carried me to see this magic.”
National champion
Van Hauwaert was the Belgian national champion in 1909, and he finished 5th overall in the Tour de France. The rest of his Palmares reads like a Flemish champion’s should. He won Bordeaux-Paris in 1907 and 1909, Milan-San Remo and Paris Roubaix in 1908, but his career was short.
Once he made enough money Van Hauwaert launched his own bike brand in Brussels, selling the bikes from a shop he called Cycles Lion des Flandres (Lion of Flanders Bikes).
It became successful because Van Hauwaert worked as hard at it as he did when he was racing.
He clocked up thousands of miles in training, and when he won Milan San Remo in 1908 he rode from Belgium to Milan beforehand, just to ensure he was ready for the race.
All those miles stood him in good stead, Cyrille Van Hauwaert lived a long and healthy like, and died in Zelik near Brussels in 1974 at the age of 90.
