Tour of Flanders - Problems of Success

Problems of Success

Van Wijnendaele could count the spectators at the end of the first Rondes, and the same went for those along the road. By the 1930s things had changed enough that the writer, Stijn Streuvels, wrote to Sportwereld in 1937 that the Ronde as seen from his house in Ingooigem was "more a procession of cars than of riders." The historian Rik Vanwalleghem speaks of a "wild rodeo" of spectators driving behind the race and seeking short cuts across the course to see the race pass several times. He said the police estimated the crowd for early races at 500,000. They followed the race, overtook it when they could, or stood so thick by the roadside in villages and especially at control points that the riders sometimes had trouble passing.

Van Wijnendaele involved the gendarmerie in 1933 but to limited effect. The 1937 race was chaotic. On 30 March 1938, van Wijnendaele wrote in Sportwereld:

To control as far as possible the plague of race-followers and assure the dependable running of our races, we have sent an exceptional request to the roads ministry to have our race followed by several gendarmes on motorbikes... They will have the right to penalise anybody following the race without permission.

The influence of spectators never ended. In 1963, Louis De Lentdecker wrote in Het Nieuwsblad:

In the last 100km of the race we were in the immediate area of the first riders. We barely saw them: there were so many people along the road and on the road that you had the impression of drowning in a tsunami ... In front of me, behind me and beside me I saw cars being driven crazily through orchards, on the sidewalks, along cycle paths, behind spectators, in front of spectators. I felt bumps and bangs on the back of our car. If there were no accidents it was only because our dear Lord and his guardian angels were the best men in the race.