Flanders redux

The 2021 Friends of the Podcast series

There was a sense during the week of the world championships in Flanders that cycling was re-born.

Fans returned in their thousands to the roadside for the first time in almost two years.

This mattered because cycling is, to a greater extent than anywhere else, a spectator sport in Flanders. But something else has been happening and changing over the past few years. As well as the beer drinking, frites-eating fans you can find enthusiastic cyclists from all over the world, keen to sample what Belgium has to offer in terms of top quality racing and bucket-list riding.

In this episode we meet some of the people responsible for running cycling in Flanders – both racing and riding. There's Herman Giedts, who runs the country's top junior team, Tomas Van Den Spiegel, the former basketball pro who is chief executive at Flanders Classics, Dries Verclyte, who runs Cycling in Flanders, Jamie Anderson and Bernard Moerman of the new Flandrien Hotel, and some Belgian fans, including members of Flanders' biggest rider fan club, Forza Lampaert.

Run time: 2hrs 03mins