A Little Bit of De Ronde History

Yesterday at 11:00 AM

A Tour of Flanders short history lesson: This is the holy Flemish cycling week (really two weeks) and the 108th edition of the Tour of Flanders is on Sunday, following the Three Days of De Panne (now the Classic Brugge De Panne), E3 Saxo Classic, GentWevelgem and Dwars door Vlaanderen. The Flemish World Championships are always hard fought for, whoever crosses that finish line first in Oudenaarde will be a star for the rest of his life.*** You can see the PEZ 2025 Tour of Flanders Preview HERE. ***Flanders first winner Paul DemanThe first Tour of Flanders was on May 23, 1913. There were only 37 riders in that first event, which was run over 324 kilometres. After twelve hours, Paul Deman was the first to cross the line in Mariakerke. Karel Van Wijnendaele was the man behind the race, he was a journalist and was looking for something new to publicise his newspaper De Sportwereld, so organising the Tour of Flanders was perfect. The early editions were all on the exceptionally bad Flemish cobbles, which the organisers have tried to keep in the race as much as possible. In those early years, De Ronde was occasionally held on the same day as Milano-Sanremo.Briek Schotte – The first FlandrienLater the organisers wanted to make changes and moved towards the Flemish Ardennes for the climbs of the Kluisberg, Kwaremont and the Kruisberg. In 1950, after the dominance of Achiel Buysse, Briek Schotte and Fiorenzo Magni, the iconic Muur van Geraardsbergen added...