Rediscovering the passion

Ex-pro Eric Vanderaerden (L) digs in. (Image: John Flynn)

As I bash away at the keys, the thunderclouds are descending upon my beautiful tropical home. Training rides will come at a premium in coming months as the Wet Season hits with a vengeance and it’ll be time to dust the cobwebs off the indoor trainer and sweat it out on the back veranda during the monsoon.

If I’m fortunate, perhaps with the new AcaDac album my young bloke will buy me for Christmas (hint, hint) will be blasting away on the Ipod and smashing my eardrums as I crank up the portable fan to overdrive and drape myself in towels. I’ll turn over the big gears on the rusty old steel-framed indoor trainer bike and let my brain drift off to a rainforest single trail, or perhaps the long dusty roads of the Outback. You’ve gotta love summer!

Over the past few weeks I’ve been on what you might describe as a religious retreat, rediscovering my passion for cycling after what could be described as a tumultuous year. For the working journalist, there’s a constant risk of getting caught up in pro cycling’s web of deceit, developing a negative attitude and becoming what too many journalists are accused of being – cynical. I’m determined not to let it happen, which is why my recent annual pilgrimage to the Crocodile Trophy here in Australia’s Tropical North, could not have been better timed.

For those of you who don’t know, I work on The Trophy as the race media guy, so what I’m writing here is presented with an obvious bias. Nonetheless, I want to relate a couple of anecdotes which might inspire that drive within each of us to work a little harder on our personal cycling goals amid the temptations of the festive season.

The day before the Croco started, I rocked up at the riders’ hotel, hoping to seek out a few of the thirty-odd Belgians who had made the journey Down-Under to test their limits in the Australian Outback. The Croc Trophy is a peculiarity in cycling. It is a race for both professionals and amateurs and it offers no prize-money. For the riders, especially those who make the journey from Europe, just making it to the start-line requires a serious financial commitment.

In the lobby, I met a rather emaciated looking bloke - shaved down, short hair, decked out in nicks and jersey, whom I vaguely recognised.

“Hello John, how are you,� he said, offering a handshake.

“It’s Eric ... Eric Vanderaerden.�

“No, you’ve gotta be joking,� I replied.

The Eric Vanderaerden I knew as a team support crew from previous Crocodile Trophies weighed ninety kilo’s, sported a mullet hair-do and chain-smoked Marlboros. The new-look version had trimmed down to seventy kilos and bore at least some resemblance to the rider who’d won Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders and the green jersey of the Tour de France back in the Nineteen-Eighties.

The obvious question was why? Why, at age 46, would a former champion whose glory days were long gone, travel half way across the world at his own expense to compete in a race where he has no chance of winning anything and every chance of DNFing?

The reply was straight-forward and painfully honest in that typical Belgian working class way.

“I have to do this, I have to finish the Crocodile,� he said – referring to a previous attempt back in 2000, where he won stages but failed to make it to the finish.

Vanderaerden wasn’t hard to spot during the ten days of the Crocodile Trophy. Most days, after the pro’s were long gone up the road, he could be found in the third pack, riding with the elite women and the more seasoned amateur male “punters�. It was an obvious delight for many of the riders to share the road with Eric and I wondered more than a few times how some of the bigger egos I’ve met in the world of sport would have handled themselves in a similar situation.

On the road from Chillagoe to Mount Mulgrave, the flattest stage of the race – and the one best suiting his attributes - there was a noticeable change in the ageing Belgian. For the first time we saw the death-stare as the former road warrior put down the hammer and went for broke. For a time, the one-time Paris-Roubaix champion rode alongside Darren O’Grady, a man with his own Paris-Roubaix connections, who was also a previous winner of the same stage.

Eric kept the lead pack within his sights for as long as possible, before the pro’s drifted off over the far horizon, never to be seen again. It was painful to watch him fight on, the mind obviously willing but the body defiant, refusing to comply in the way that it once did.

Long after the stage ended, I was working in the race media centre when Eric dropped in to say Gidday.

“It was so hard out there today, the man with the big hammer, he came and hit me on the head,� Eric recalled. Perhaps it was the same man with the hammer who hit paraplegic ironman Marc Herremans on the head for ten days straight in 2007, I thought!

Smiling and standing proud, Eric humbly offered another piece of information, which obviously meant a great deal to him.

“I made the podium this evening,� he said. “I won my category in the masters.�

Here he was, a champion of the road, satisfied to just win his age-group category, up against a bunch of eager amateurs. It was one moment from the Trophy of 2008 that has stayed with me and I’m starting to understand why.

What Eric has remind me of - and the inspirational Marc Herremans before him - is that beyond glory and its evil twin greed, the goal itself is what really matters. Well and truly over-the-hill, Eric Vanderaerden came to the Crocodile Trophy with the modest goals of finishing the race and perhaps claiming a stage in his age-group category. There was no fan-fare, no cycling groupies or media following his every move. The mission was personal and so were his goals.

“It is done,� he said when it was all over. “I can go home now, satisfied.�

So here’s a call to action with the Festive Season upon us and, let’s face it, more time to train than our factory of excuses will allow.

Find a race for 2009, circle it on the calendar and start putting in the training miles. Who cares if you finish 99th – so long as it was your goal to make the top 100!