A spin on wheels of fortune
The Belgian national is manager of the Sean Kelly/An Post cycling team, and on the third stage of the recent FBD Insurance Rás, he’s hoping – and planning – for a good day.
The Carrick-on-Suir legend, Kelly founded the team in 2006, basing them in his academy in Belgium. Bogaerts runs the show and most importantly, as I fold myself into the passenger seat, he drives the car. He makes it look easy; it isn’t.
If being in the team car when the stage reaches fever pitch later is to be at the team’s nerve centre, then being cloistered with the riders in the race van before the day’s action gets underway, is to be at its very heart.
Niko Eekhout – a former Belgian champion and a grizzled, veteran pro compared to his more inexperienced colleagues – has his Popeye-arm legs perched on the dashboard. Through the stereo, he pumps relentless Euro trance (it’s 10am) with more beats per minute than Thumper the rabbit on an adrenaline drip.
Clearly, he’s trying to prod a reaction from his manager as he flashes a mischievous smile, and utters something in Flemish to his compatriot Benny De Schrooder.
De Schrooder, looking like he should still have stabilisers and an A-Team sticker on his bike, carefully pulls on his footwear. But his fresh features belie a dogged competitor. He takes the iPod from his older team-mate and, giggling, turns the music to another dance tune.
Towards the back of the van, Bogaerts is – deliberately – ignoring the rave anthems confusing the American tourists outside in the historic, harbour town of Cobh. Páidí O’Brien – from Banteer in Cork – rubs oil into his legs and speaks in a faux Low Countries accent while other Irish athletes David O’Loughlin and Mark Cassidy look for a missing piece of equipment and discuss the much-improved weather conditions.
In small groups, the riders – there are five in the race this week – head down to a local hotel to sign in, before skipping back to make final preparations. Game time.
Since its inception in 1953, the Rás Tailteann, as it was then known, has grown into one of the longest-running and best-known stage races in the world. The eight-day event regularly attracts the cream of the sport with countless Rás stage winners, kings of the mountains and overall victors graduating to carve out careers in the paid ranks.
None have yet to go on to win the Monte Carlo Grand Prix or replace Jeremy Clarkson as Top Gear presenter; but Bogaerts may well be the first.
The Flemish polyglot slides behind the wheel moments before the gun. He hangs out the window, exchanging banter with rival teams’ staff as he cruises past. The mechanic Benny is relegated to the back seat with his tools and half a dozen spare wheels, as I ride shotgun. He doesn’t speak to me.
For the next four hours, we will hurtle towards Cahirciveen, on as many wheels as the cyclists we’re following for much of the time.
ONE rider, exhausted after a Tour stage, was once asked what he thought of the French countryside. “It looks like the back of a cyclist’s arse to me,” he explained, exasperated. To me, the 189km between Cobh and Cahirciveen were not dissimilar. But even before I could get yet too familiar with the back end of a peloton, we were stranded in the middle of very a busy South Ring Road in Cork city, attempting to change a flat on David O’Loughlin’s bike.
This was the team’s first puncture of the tour. “It’s you, perhaps,” Bogaerts utters flatly at me as the mechanic hops out of the still-moving car and chases after the rider. It doesn’t go well. As the rest of the competitors build up valuable seconds, Benny fails to clip the spare on – but the frame of the €5,000 bike is cracked.
An irate O’Loughlin bellows through the windscreen at his manager, throwing his arms up in exasperation, as I idly flip through my notebook, whistling. Eventually taking a new bike from the car roof, he’s pushed off towards the pack.
Now the fun starts. The voiture balai or broom car is the vehicle that rides at the back of the riders, to pick up anyone who abandons the race and importantly here, helping to keep the city traffic away from the route. This doesn’t happen and we’re immediately enveloped in a quagmire of local commuters.
It is not like this on Eurosport.
Bogaerts speeds alongside his cyclist, beeping the horn like he just won a county championship, and shouting – in a colourful array of languages – at shocked looking civilians. Imagine sitting at a roundabout, trying to tune in Lyric FM and casually checking your teeth for broccoli in the rear view mirror when you see a luminous green van, driven by a furious and vociferous young man. It becomes apparent that he cares little for our customs – traffic lights, road lanes, speed limits – as he chicanes between snaking rows of cars, a cyclist pumping his legs behind to keep up. This is just another day on the pro circuit, it seems.
Thanks in no small part to his driving skills, we catch the peloton and O’Loughlin – who was very unlucky not to snatch a stage win the day before – can get back to business.
THE Ring of Kerry is spectacular – and a death trap. The radio in the car crackles every now and then and we skid off to get alongside a rider who needs wet gear or wants an energy bar. Each time we whiz past, our bumper kisses the threads of the last unfortunate’s rear wheel. But riders trust the team cars always.
Eekhout is part of a group of half a dozen which makes a break for it with mere kilometres to go. Bogaerts is animated and roars at the radio and Benny the mechanic – while I tuck into the team’s sandwiches – as the cavalcade of team cars enter Cahirciveen at last, ahead of the breakaway group. We listen on the radio in silence as the race volunteers relay the result of the sprint finish. The team could really do with a stage victory. I could do with a lift home. But Niko is fifth.
The Kerry town’s main street is hardly the Champs Elysee, and the Ring of Kerry is not L’Alpe d’Huez but, on a bad day at the office, no doubt the effort the riders put in is just as Alpine.
And the driving is extremely continental.
The Seán Kelly team will compete in next month’s Tour of Ireland.
* Contact: adrian.russell@examiner.ie.
Twitter:@adrianrussell
