When Tadej Pogačar won the Tour of Flanders for the first time in 2023, Jeroen Mahieu could not hold back his emotions as he watched from the Oude Kwaremont, the centerpiece of the race.
“I cried tears of happiness,” Mahieu says. “It was a big party afterwards.”
The 40-year-old electronics factory worker is not just a fan, but the founder of the Pogiboys, one of the larger fan clubs that dot his cycling-crazy home nation.
This is Belgium, a nation where a foreign cyclist can be revered like a God, where village kermesse races draw big crowds and where the story of a farmer cobbling his local hill so that it would be included in the Tour of Flanders has gone down in folklore.
Covering 278 kilometers between Antwerp and Oudenaarde, the race that locals call ‘De Ronde van Vlaanderen‘ is the climax of two weeks of grueling one-day races around the western Belgian region and its infamous bergs (hills). It is a sporting event, raucous festival and cultural institution rolled into one, with its roots going back to empowerment for what used to be the poorer, disenfranchised part of the country.
On race day, it feels like Flanders stops still. Many citizens, even those with little affinity for sport, stand by the roadside before their Easter lunches to support it.
The Pogiboys head to a race on a bus. (Jeroen Mahieu)
For spectators in the know, this is like Mardi Gras. “The Ronde van Vlaanderen is my biggest day in the year,” Mahieu says, who will be there in force this year with his fellow Pogiboys. They are one of many supportersgroeps in a densely-populated area where almost every town has its own local cycling hero.
Jasper Stuyven, Wout van Aert, and Remco Evenepoel, unsurprisingly, have dedicated followings; the Forza Lampaert club supports Soudal Quick-Step stalwart and farmer’s son Yves.
Nationality is no limiter, though. Matej’s Matjes (Matej’s Mates) throw their weight behind Matej Mohorič, while King Küng Freunde, a posse partial to Swiss powerhouse Stefan Küng, come with their inflatable effigy and catchy chants.
Quick Visit at my Belgium Fanclub in Moerzeke @KingKungFreunde 🤩🤝🏽 https://t.co/3unXN6dKhK
— Stefan Küng (@stefankueng) April 1, 2022
“Some people ask me why I don’t cheer for a Belgian. It was something in me that said this boy can be the best cyclist in the world,” Mahieu says of Pogačar. “I liked his style of racing the most, and I like him as a person too.”
Far from jumping on a bandwagon, Mahieu set up what he claims is the world’s first Tadej Pogačar fan club in April 2019 after being wowed by the youngster’s attacking racing at the Tour of the Basque Country.
An annual subscription to the Pogiboys costs €25 ($28; £21), with members receiving a membership card and a casquette-style cycling cap. Money received is put back into the fan club, which also supports the Tadej Pogačar Foundation.
What started as a few friends and family members cheering for Pogačar has sprawled to a fan club of 350 people, stretching as far as Brazil and Japan.
“Many people try to have a fan club, but they don’t really appreciate it. It goes way further than just putting things on Facebook or Instagram,” Mahieu, who is based in the border town of Wervik, says.
The Pogiboys will be at Paris-Roubaix and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and have visited Strade Bianche and the Tour de France in the past. Their songs have even made it onto Spotify.
For Mahieu, the organizing is the hardest part: getting hold of a vehicle, arranging annual barbecues, and having patience for attendees who pay their fee at the eleventh hour.
Then there is also the tricky task of accounting for every Pogiboy when it is time to hit the road post-race. One year, a member of their group walked up and down the Oude Kwaremont five times without finding their bus.
“I love it, it’s my hobby,” Mahieu says. “If I start something, even at work, it’s until the end. I never give up and never quit trying, which is also Tadej’s slogan.”
At the Tour of Flanders on Sunday, their day will start with coffee and koffiekoeken pastries on the way to the start in Antwerp before setting up camp at the Oude Kwaremont, the “holy place” of the finishing circuit, for sandwiches, all washed down with a cold one. “Of course: you’ve never seen a Belgian without beer,” Mahieu says.
They will stand with the Flo Boys, the fan club of Pogačar’s team-mate Florian Vermeersch, as they support the Slovenian in his bid for a third win in the Belgian Monument one-day race.
There is something to be savored in this sense of community bordering on communion, especially in an era of dwindling attention spans and growing screen time. Being outdoors all day, hanging out with family members and friends new and old: it is a connection not just to a beloved sport but to people, to tradition and what unites them.
Unlike many major sports, cycling’s superstars are usually happy to mingle with their fans. (Jeroen Mahieu)
While Jayco-Alula’s veteran domestique Chris Juul-Jensen is not aware of having his own fan club in Belgium, the high-esteem is mutual. He has observed that there are no shouts from souvenir-hunting spectators for one of his bottles or caps.
“They respect the riders. It’s only encouraging shouts from the side of the road. The classic Belgian ‘Come on, uh!’” Juul-Jensen says.
“That’s something beautiful with Belgian cycling culture: they want to see bike riders race and fight it out. They don’t need all that paraphernalia to say they’ve been there and witnessed it.
“And they can create an atmosphere that’s second to none: the Belgian beers, the chips, the iconic Flandrien flag. Every young rider growing up just wants to race in Belgium and see that flag waving in a field because then you’ve made it — you’re part of this show.”
A five-time competitor, Juul-Jensen calls the Tour of Flanders the “Holy Grail” and regards it as the sport’s most iconic Monument. “The way the Belgians respect and appreciate this race in itself describes how big it is: it’s a national holiday, holier than Christmas.”
No country is as mad for professional cycling as Belgium, and Flanders in particular. (Tom Goyvaerts / BELGA MAG / AFP via Getty Images)
Their admiration also speaks to the size of the sporting challenge. Juul-Jensen remembers going to his first Belgian racing block in March 2013 and hearing his teammates tell him that he did know what he was getting himself into. “Finishing one of these is a goal in itself,” he says, repeating their words about so-called warm-up races E3 Prijs Vlaanderen and Gent-Wevelgem.
Accordingly, completing De Ronde is a big stamp of approval to Belgians. “If they know I’ve done the Tour of Flanders, I’m a gentleman and a hero in their books — a Flandrien,” Juul-Jensen says.
The Danish rider calls the Tour of Flanders “a frightening, young man’s game”. Even its early acts have become intense as riders try to get ahead in the breakaway and fight for position before hitting the 16 bergs (also known as hellingen), which populate the race’s second half.
“As soon as you hit the cobbles and these small roads, it’s carnage,” Juul-Jensen says. “There are hundreds and thousands of small accelerations, and you’re fighting for position on roads you’d prefer not to drive down in a car.”
Being close to the front before the Oude Kwaremont, a quiet cobbled road in Kluisbergen which transforms into a six-deep mass of cheers and beers on race day, is essential for success. It requires courage, commitment, strong legs and the disposal of rational thinking. “You’re barreling down a three-lane highway at 80 kilometers an hour, then 170 riders have to turn right into a lane that is almost as wide as a cycling path. Then the race starts there,” Juul-Jensen says.
The race is so woven into the fabric of society that locals will do anything to be involved. Myth has it that the race’s final climb, the Paterberg, was a dirt track until a local farmer laid cobbles on it in 1983 because he wanted his steep hill to feature in De Ronde. (The more prosaic truth is that it was a simple case of municipal road resurfacing with a more aesthetically pleasing surface. Inclusion in the region-stopping race was an afterthought, but why should that get in the way of a good story?)
Belgian rider Jenno Berckmoes tries some jam given to him by a supporter (David Pintens / BELGA MAG / Belga / AFP via Getty Images)
Juul-Jensen admires the Belgian riders who live and breathe these races and are helped by their encyclopedic knowledge of local geography.
“All the tiny details are so important and make the difference,” he says. “From a bird’s-eye view, we don’t really cover such a big distance, but it’s a lot of crisscrossing all the time. They know exactly where to be and when and pop up at the right moment.”
The race’s climbs are all tightly packed in the Flemish Ardennes within a roughly 20 by 20 mile area, giving the route’s finale the resemblance of a small child’s jumbled drawing.
Given the serpentine lanes, it is not surprising that riders can stray off-course. EF Education-EasyPost rider Noah Hobbs got lost at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad in February, going the wrong way after breaking his wheel. A fan picked him up and reunited him with his team at the finish in Ninove. “Without him, I think I’d still be somewhere in Belgium,” Hobbs said on the team’s Instagram channel.
The British neo-pro won’t be the last and is not even the most infamous rider to take a wrong turn in a Belgian classic.
Eritrean rider Mekseb Debesay went missing for a few hours after the 2016 E3-Harelbeke. The Dimension Data cyclist had been part of a group of backmarkers riding to the finish off the course when he got lost.
His worried directeur sportif, Jean-Pierre Heynderickx, had called the police and race organization for news of the missing racer. Zilch. It later transpired that a spectator had cycled with Debesay back to his home in nearby Lierde, given him fresh clothes and food, and let him use the shower.
He arrived back at the team hotel at 9pm, four hours after the race finish, with an anecdote to tell. “I’ve heard several riders with similar stories throughout the years,” Juul-Jensen says. “The Belgians will take care of a bike rider.”