An Amstel worth waiting for

Recalling the lead-up to the 2006 Amstel Gold Race, Anthony Tan takes a step back in time, and provides a window into the challenging life of a cycling hack.

I'd been waiting years for this moment: to have a bike race go past my front door.

Having spent the previous year based in Vevey, a quaint French-speaking town on the pristine shores of Switzerland's Lake Geneva (and Charlie Chaplin's final resting place), my intention for the 2006 cycling season was to move to a tiny town in the north of Italy where life would be a little cheaper.

As a foreign correspondent, freelancer or not, it's all about frugality. Overspend your budget and chances are you won't get the call-up to cover next week's classic or stage race – never mind next year.

Over the years, I had travelled through much of central and northern Italy, but this tiny town of Laveno-Mombello was news to me. I only discovered it after acquainting myself with a member of HomeExchange.com, a Web site established to put like-minded travellers in contact with each other.

Simply put, exchanges – once agreed upon by both parties – work off a barter-style system: you stay at someone's place, they stay at yours, with no financial transaction involved.

Perfect.

Working off a principle of trust posed no barrier. Years of interviewing anyone who's anyone and anyone who's no-one comes in handy: before long, you develop an innate sense of good versus bad, and importantly, whether someone is telling the truth.

Richard Hainebach, the South African who I was speaking to, was definitely of the former ilk (and is someone I continue to keep in touch with to this day).

So the problem was not so much the people, it was the place, and sans voiture (without a car), travelling to the destinations required of me. Nestled on the banks of Lake Maggiore in the country's northwest, Laveno's population numbers less than 10,000 inhabitants.

For a native Sydneysider, that's quite a shock.

Vevey, small in itself – too small, I found – was three times the size and had regular bus and train services to the much larger neighbouring city of Lausanne, the International Olympic Committee headquarters just 14 kilometres away. From there, I could go almost anywhere.

Laveno, I'd been told, had only a patchy train service to Milan that took just under an hour and a half. Richard said it was better to take a car if I wanted to go anywhere.

Problem was, I didn't have one.

That's when Richard suggested an alternative: "How about Holland?" Ya, ik sprek klein bitje Nederlands...

In the diminutive town of Banholt Рwe're now talking hundreds, not thousands Рthe Hainebach family once lived in a old (almost three hundred years), Proven̤al-style farmhouse where Richard and his Italian wife Paola raised their three daughters, Esther, Miriam and Simonetta.

Despite having a terrifyingly tiny list of inhabitants, it was ideally located on the Belgian-Dutch-German border, and was just a 45-minute bus ride into the far more cosmopolitan city of Maastricht, not too far from where I lived when I was a bike racer myself.

Richard told me he only moved out because Paola's mother needed constant care in her old age, and Miriam and Simonetta were now living in Stockholm and Den Haag (The Hague) respectively. That left just Esther and her boyfriend in this grand old place that "begged to be lived in", encouraged Richard.

Also, instead of an exchange, he proposed I pay a nominal amount for rent and keep the place tidy, to save them organising cleaners and gardeners from afar.

Oh yes, there was one other thing, inconsequential to most but rather significant to me: it was possible to walk out onto the Amstel Gold parcours from the house.

The deal was done. As a mark of respect, I was determined to be the most scrupulous houseguest (and part-time gardener) they ever had.

That on any afternoon, I could throw a leg over my titanium Bianchi and ride up Le Cauberg, the one-in-seven finishing pinch that often decides the winner of each year's Amstel Gold Race after some 250 kilometres, was a heavenly proposition that I never once took for granted but embraced whenever I could.

I also rode much of the circuitous, intertwining parcours that comprise 'The Amstel' and regularly tested myself on the 30-odd climbs (not all at once, mind you) the locals call 'bergjes' throughout the south Limburg region.

That each of the big Classics before it – Sanremo, Flanders, Gent-Wevelgem, Roubaix – were stunning to witness in their own right did not detract from my enthusiasm. It only enhanced it.

Woken by the susurrations of wind through the apple trees, the pitter-patter of rain knocking on my bedroom window, and the constant though irregular 'moo' of the cows in the paddock, the morning of April 16, 2006 began like any other.

At the start in Maastricht's cobbled Grote Markt, it was bucketing rain. In spring of northern Europe, a normal start to the day.

For lovers of cycling, the weather was perfect.

Riders huddled in their team cars and buses for as long as they could, rummaging anxiously through their wet-weather reserves. Meanwhile, my Belgian colleague and I grabbed as many pre-race interviews and soggy snaps as we could before kick-off, and when the gun fired and the peloton took off, we scooted into a McDonalds to use their WiFi connection, filing our grabs and downing some typically ordinary coffee.

No time for an Amstel bier just yet. Still raining cats and dogs, we bolted to our car and drove to the finish in Valkenburg.

Like many of the 250 kilometre-plus Classics, the Amstel Gold is a race of attrition, and with the finish no more than a half-hour's drive away, time was on our side. Inside the press room, there was an aura of nervous energy and excitement as the rain pelted down on the canvas canopy, dissipating as the day wore on.

Over the course of 253 kilometres, riders would tackle the Cauberg once, twice, thrice, finishing at the top after its third ascension. 40 clicks out, the indefatigable Stefen Wesemann had launched a three-up move that quickly turned into a one-man show when he dropped his companions Igor Astarloa and Leonardo Bertagnolli.

The German was clearly on a remarkable day, a 10-man chase group comprising the world's finest unable to bring him back till the closing kilometres, just before Paolo Bettini chose his moment.

It was unsurprising to see 'Il Grillo's' move heavily marked by the unwieldy chase group; Fränk Schleck's should have been too, but the lanky Luxembourger's attack was so fierce, so irrepressible, that his companions could only watch and wonder what might have been. Emerging from the mist with fists clenched, the yell of victory and more than six hours in the saddle said it all.

Schleck would go on to win the coveted L'Alpe d'Huez stage of that year's Tour de France, stamping his authority as one of cycling's big talents.

Little did the world know that his younger brother Andy, five years his junior, would become an even larger talent just one year later, finishing second to Danilo Di Luca in the 2007 Giro d'Italia, and with greater things expected.

Editor's note: The 2010 Amstel Gold Race will be held this Sunday, April 18 in the Netherlands. It covers a distance of 257.3 kilometres, containing 31 climbs including three ascensions of the final climb to the finish, the Cauberg.