BinckBank Tour 2018

Words: Matthew Bailey / Images: Chris Auld

A visit to the Netherlands cannot fail to warm the heart, and inspire the jealousy, of the foreign cycling advocate. There is simply nowhere else in the world like it for riding your bike. In every city, town and village, a never-ending stream of cyclists trundles gently along beautifully-maintained, fully-segregated bicycle lanes leading to enormous and conveniently-located secure bike parking facilities. Every sort of person cycles – children, grandmothers, delivery agents, businesspeople – on every sort of machine: tandems and duo bikes (side-by-side tandems), cargo bikes, hand cycles, recumbents and, increasingly, e-bikes.

But, as any cycling advocate will be quick to tell you, it wasn’t always like this. In fact, it’s not that long since the Netherlands was a decidedly uncomfortable place to ride. As in other Western European countries a post-war economic boom saw car use grow rapidly and bicycles almost disappear from the roads altogether. The share of trips made by bicycle in Amsterdam fell from around 80% in the 1950s to only 20% by the 1970s. And the casualty statistics were appalling: the worst year, 1971, saw 3,300 people lose their lives on Dutch roads, around 450 of them children. The father of one of the young victims, Vic Langenhoff, wrote an impassioned article entitled “Stop The Murder of Children” – Stop de Kindermoord – which became the name of a national movement to improve road safety. It was a time of political activism and protest in Holland, and other cycling advocacy groups also quickly emerged. The First Only Real Dutch Cyclists’ Union, for example, painted illegal bike lanes on especially dangerous stretches of road.

Remarkably, the politicians listened. Starting in the 1980s, Dutch cities were remodelled to accommodate comprehensive networks of what has now grown to an amazing 35,000 km of segregated cycle paths, all continually upgraded for ever-improved safety and comfort.

But it isn’t only a matter of building physical infrastructure. Cycling is also promoted through wider policy initiatives. Cycling proficiency lessons are a compulsory part of the national school curriculum. Dutch law incorporates a (complex, controversial and misleadingly named) concept of “strict liability”, which results in a cyclist-friendly apportionment of blame (and costs) in the event of an accident.

So you might think, with all these people riding their bikes all the time, with two-wheeled travel at the heart of the nation’s culture, politics and topography, this must be a great market for the sport of road cycling. Right?

Well – not necessarily. To the Dutch, a bicycle is a household appliance like a washing machine: something very useful, and which makes an important contribution to one’s quality of life, but not something to get excited about. It’s just a convenient way of getting around. So most people who cycle don’t have any greater interest in cycle sport than do people who take the bus. Indeed, there are different words for people who ride for transport and for recreation: fietser and wielrenner, respectively. The average fietser wouldn’t dream of wearing a helmet, much less a Lycra body stocking, and has no desire to work up a sweat. In fact, though many journeys are made by bicycle, most of them are very short. Those secure bike parks are invariably located at or near to train and bus stations, meaning that the cycle paths work largely as a feeder for the public transport system.

The true level of public interest in pro cycling was long reflected in the fortunes of the original Tour of the Netherlands, which always teetered on the very edge of viability. It was held on 14 occasions in the 18 years between the first edition in 1948 and 1965, when it was finally put out of its misery. It was resurrected as an annual event in 1975, but despite the presence of a few international stars – Eric Vanderaerden took the title in 1985, and no less a rider than Laurent Fignon won in 1989 – it remained a low-key, largely domestic affair, with 21 Dutch winners of the 30 editions between 1975 and 2004.

Even extensive Dutch success in the sport of the time did nothing to help. Joop Zoetemelk won the Vuelta a España in 1979, the Tour de France in 1980 and was World Champion in 1985. Gerrie Knetemann also won the world championships (in 1978) and ten Tour stages. Jan Raas matched both these remarkable feats, with ten Tour stage wins and a world championship (in 1979) on his palmarès, and also won two Tours of Flanders, a Paris-Roubaix and a Milan-Sanremo. But the Tour of the Netherlands flatlined. Even the acquisition of a large corporate sponsor and a consequent change of name to the ‘Eneco Tour’ did little to raise its profile.

The arrival of the UCI ProTour in 2005, intended to bring structure to what the governing body saw as an incoherent racing calendar, changed everything. Despite the mixed fortunes of pro cycling in the Netherlands, UCI President Hein Verbruggen insisted there should be a ProTour event in his home country (telling a newspaper that it was necessary “for marketing reasons”). But if the race was to qualify for the ProTour, meaning that the world’s biggest teams and best riders would attend, it simply had to get more serious. And that meant it had to get harder.

Holland’s flat and featureless roads were great for fietsers, but they didn’t make for the sort of punishing parcours demanded by the ProTour. However, a neat solution was at hand – if the neighbours could be persuaded to get on board.

The race’s organisers approached the organisers of both the Tour of Belgium and the Tour of Luxembourg with a view to combining the three races into a single Benelux Tour. While this never happened, the Tour of Belgium did become a co-organiser of the Eneco Tour, opening the way for the race to incorporate some of the more interesting geography on offer next door.

The result is something genuinely unique: a late summer outing for the stars of the Spring Classics, who generally attend in large numbers (it probably helps that the Vuelta a España, which is held concurrently, has increasingly become a race for climbers, with diminished appeal to the peloton’s rouleurs). By taking in the best of the Netherlands’ roads and also the hellingen of the Belgian classics, it requires the rider to master all elements of the Northern Classics – the cobbles, lots of short, sharp climbs and often rain and crosswinds too. In a final quirk all stages (except the ITT) feature a ‘Golden Kilometre’ – three intermediate sprints within a mere thousand metres of racing. Time bonuses of 3, 2 and 1 seconds are awarded for each sprint.

Before 2005 the Tour of the Netherlands had a reputation for being decided by time trial, the roads and route being insufficiently challenging to generate meaningful splits in the peloton during the other stages. But in the modern era this is no longer the case. True, the race has been won by out-and-out testers like Iván Gutiérrez (2007, 2008) and Tony Martin (2010). But it has also been won by grizzled, cobble-crushing hard men in Zdeněk Štybar (2013) and Niki Terpstra (2016). On the other hand, Tim Wellens, who won in 2014 and 2015, is not much of a time triallist and has never even started either the Tour of Flanders or Paris-Roubaix. Last year’s victor was Tom Dumoulin, a world-class tester but also a Giro d’Italia winner. In other words, riders of very different types can compete for the victory, making the race highly competitive and unpredictable.

2018’s race, photographed for Conquista by Chris Auld, threw up more surprises. Stefan Küng looked like the favourite for the overall win after taking stage 2’s ITT, but the young Slovenian rider Matej Mohorič took over the leader’s jersey after stage 3, having made his way into a break that remained well clear of the bunch on what had looked for all the world like a day for the sprinters. He retained the jersey through stages designed to resemble Amstel Gold (stage 5) and Liège-Bastogne-Liège (stage 6), though he was pushed hard in particular by Michael Matthews, who finished just five seconds short of Mohorič despite winning the seventh and final stage, a 215km ‘mini Tour of Flanders’ which finished on the mythical, cobbled Muur van Geraardsbergen.

Since 2017 the race has had a new sponsor and is now known, unforgettably, as the BinckBank Tour. While Binck does have a banking licence it started life as, and remains, an online discount broker allowing individuals to invest cheaply and efficiently in various markets. Its name derives from the Dutch word ketelbinkie, which means ‘ship’s boy’ – a member of crew who is (says the company) “not the most important on the ship. But indispensable . . . Hardworking, serviceable, down-to-earth and hands-on.”

So . . . the BinckBank Tour is a race in the style of a one-day Spring Classic that takes place over an entire week in August. It is based in a country where almost everyone cycles but few care for the sport of cycling. It was created to replace three races which all still exist. It has been won by time triallists, cobbled specialists, riders who have never ridden a cobbled Monument and a Grand Tour winner. It has two organisers. And its name sounds like a character from a children’s TV show (not least because the Dutch pronounce ‘bank’ as ‘bonk’).

In sum, none of it makes any sense – and yet it has a solid claim to being the best and most exciting week-long stage race of the year. Maybe one day even the Dutch will come out and watch it.

This feature first appeared in Conquista 20.