History
The Tour of Flanders was conceived in 1913 by Karel Van Wijnendaele, co-founder of the sportspaper Sportwereld. In that era it was customary for publishers of newspapers and magazines to organise cycling races as a way of promoting circulation.
The race was before the second world war usually on the same day as the Milan–San Remo competition in Italy. Prominent Italian and French racers preferred the latter which explains why there was only a single non-Belgian winner before the war. After the war the race grew in importance when it became a part of the Challenge Desgrange-Colombo, a precursor of today's UCI ProTour, of which it is now a major round. The record holders are the Belgians, Achiel Buysse, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, and Tom Boonen, and the Italian, Fiorenzo Magni, each with three victories.
Read more about this topic: Tour Of Flanders
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The only history is a mere question of one’s struggle inside oneself. But that is the joy of it. One need neither discover Americas nor conquer nations, and yet one has as great a work as Columbus or Alexander, to do.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)