With Opening Weekend underway, and the racing at Omloop heating up, we take a brief tour of Belgium’s best – and weirdest – cycling statues, that you can admire while waiting for the riders to race by… cycling OHN2023
As one of the first Flemish pioneers to win big outside Belgium’s borders, it’s perhaps no surprise that Odiel Defraeye – the first Belgian winner of the Tour de France in 1912 – is memorialised with a statue which also includes, you guessed it, a map of France.
Though he lived his whole life in East Flanders, Buysse excelled on the climbs of Wallonia and France. But that didn’t stop those commemorating his achievements from depicting him in the true Flandrien style: emerging from rock.Befitting one of the very few riders to transcend Belgium’s often fierce linguistic and cultural divide, it’s perhaps no surprise that Eddy Merckx has been memorialised by a host of statues in both Flanders and Wallonia.
And then maybe we’ll put together a part two in time for the Tour of Flanders, complete with joint-Ronde record holder Achiel Buysse’s ‘rake for a head’ scrap metal memorial in Wetteren, while also tackling the mystery surrounding the removal of legendary classics rider – but divisive personality – Rik van Steenbergen’s statue in Waregem.Help us to fund our site
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