Hard times for Belgian cycling
About the article
This is a digitised version of an article from The Cayman Compass's print archive. Occasionally, the digitisation process introduces transcription errors, or other problems.
See the article in its original context from December 1982.
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The occasional victory has been overshadowed by a string of poor performances sparking anxieties that Belgium has finally lost the knack of producing champion riders.
Few of the young hopefuls have lived up to expectations and none have come near to filling the vacuum left by former stars like Eddy Merckx, five times winner of the Tour de France in the early 1970's.
And neither has Freddy Maertens, winner of last year's World Professional Road Race title, been able to raise Belgian morale with any notable performances.
Amid the gloom which has descended on the sports pages of newspapers and among the many thousands of Belgian cycling fans, a whole variety of reasons for the failure has emerged.
The young riders admit they have been fairly beaten by powerful foreign competitors, such as Frenchman Bernard Hinault, winner of this year's Tour de France and Tour of Italy.
But they say part of the problem also lies with the pressure of trying to live up to the reputation of people like Merckx amid a wave of nostalgia for the days when Belgium dominated international cycling.
"The era when Eddy Merckx and his team were able to lay down the law has well and truly gone," says 25-year-old rider Claude Criquelion, "But public opinion has not forgotten those days and everyone expects a future Merckx".
Jean-Luc Vandenbroucke, who achieved one of the season's rare successes with a victory in the Blois-Chaville Classic, blames the media and, to a lesser extent, some of his own fans.
Vandenbroucke, 27, says they expected too much when he turned professional after a promising amateur career. As for Merckx himself, he describes the season as "mediocre" and says riders today are not prepared to put in the work and dedication required to carry off a championship.
"A lot of our professionals no longer like cycling" he said recently. The former champion's main criticism is aimed at the sponsors. He believes they pay out huge amounts of cash indiscriminately.
"The professionals are now getting more money than in the past even though the results are worse... the only rule is that if you earn a lot, you must put in some great performances," he said.
Sponsorship plays a large part in professional cycling here, with top names receiving as much as 40,000 dollars a season for advertising brand names.
Leading sponsors, cycle makers and tobacco firms, say they think the money is well spent and is a powerful form of advertising.
But some of them say the cash does not necessarily bring good performances from the riders. Indeed, they argue, it can have the opposite effect.
"There is no longer any incentive once riders own villas and can drive to the start of the race in a Mercedes," said one leading cigarette sponsor.
