The Tour of Flanders is an annual road cycling race held in Belgium every spring. The most important cycling race in Flanders, it is part of the UCI World Tour and organized by Flanders Classics. Its nickname is Vlaanderens Mooiste (Dutch for "Flanders' Finest"). First held in 1913, the Tour of Flanders had its 100th edition in 2016.
Today it is one of the five monuments of cycling, together with Milan–San Remo, Paris–Roubaix, Liège–Bastogne–Liège and the Giro di Lombardia. It is one of the two major cobbled classics, shortly before Paris–Roubaix, which is one week after the Tour of Flanders. The event had its only interruptions during World War I and has been contested every year since 1919, the longest continuous sequence for any cycling classic.
Eight men hold the record of most victories, making the Tour of Flanders unique among the major classics. Belgians Achiel Buysse, Eric Leman, Johan Museeuw, and Tom Boonen, Italian Fiorenzo Magni, Dutch Mathieu van der Poel, Swiss Fabian Cancellara and Slovenian Tadej Pogačar each have three victories.
Since 2004, a women's race has been organized on the same day as the men's over a shorter distance. Since 2021, the women's race shares the Tour of Flanders name with the men's race. To distinguish between them, they are now categorised as the 'Elite Men' and 'Elite Women' editions.
Creation
The Ronde as a regional symbol
The Tour of Flanders was conceived in 1913 by Léon van den Haute, co-founder of the sports newspaper Sportwereld. In the era it was customary for publishers of newspapers and magazines to organise cycling races as a means of promoting circulation.
By the beginning of the 20th century, cycling was in a poor state in Belgium. Velodromes were closing and national championships on the road or track were no longer organised. The one major Belgian race, Liège–Bastogne–Liège, was in the French-speaking South. As the gloom increased, Odile Defraye became the first Belgian winner of the Tour de France in 1912. He was a 20-year-old Fleming and, although he rode for Alcyon, a French team, he symbolized a potential rise for Belgian cycling. Defraye's victory inspired August De Maeght, mayor of Halle and director of the press group Société Belge d'Imprimerie, to publish a Dutch-language sports magazine called Sportwereld.
Sportwerelds most prominent cycling writer was Karel Van Wijnendaele, a young sports journalist and cycling fan who had tried cycle-racing himself. The first issue appeared in time for the Championship of Flanders on 12 September 1912.
The Tour of Flanders is the only classic to have been held on German-occupied territory during the Second World War and in full agreement with the German command. The Germans not only allowed and enjoyed the race but helped police the route as well. This led to accusations of collaboration in an age where many Flemish nationalists had strong ties with Nazi Germany. After the War, De Standaard and Het Algemeen Nieuws-Sportwereld were sequestered by the state and several journalists, largely non-sports reporters, were sentenced for collaboration. Van Wijnendaele was forbidden to work as a journalist for life – a ban lifted when he produced a letter of support from General Montgomery, confirming that he had hidden downed British pilots during the war and had protected them in his house.
A rival Flemish newspaper, Het Volk, started the Omloop van Vlaanderen in 1945. Het Volk wanted to initiate a new cycling event in Flanders as a rival race to what it saw as the Ronde's closeness to the Nazis.
History
The first races
thumb|right|[[Korenmarkt, Ghent (pictured ca. 1890–1900), was the scene of the start of the first Tour of Flanders in 1913]]
On 25 May 1913 Karel van Wijnendaele organized the first Tour of Flanders, crossing the two western provinces of Flanders. It started at six in the morning in Ghent and finished in Mariakerke, now a suburb of Ghent. It covered , all on bad roads with just the occasional cycle path.
The first race consisted of 37 riders, followed by five assistance cars. In 1914 the field was 47 and the organization still struggled to find enough financial resources. A disappointed van Wijnendaele later said:
<blockquote>Sportwereld was so young and so small for the big Ronde that we wanted. We had bitten off more than we could chew. It was hard, seeing a band of second-class riders riding across Flanders, scraping up a handful of centimes to help cover the costs. The same happened in 1914. No van Hauwaert, no Masselis, no Defraeye, no Mosson, no Mottiat, no Van Den Berghe, all forbidden to take part by their French bike companies. The interwar editions were marked by appalling road conditions and grisly landscapes in war-ridden Flanders, but the Tour of Flanders gained popularity fast.
In the 1920s Flemish track specialists dominated the race. Gérard Debaets, a specialist of six-day racing in the American circuit, won the race twice; in 1924 as one of only 17 finishers in dreadful weather conditions. Swiss Heiri Suter became the first foreign winner in 1923 and achieved the first ever cobbled races "double" win with Paris–Roubaix one week later. In 1926, a group of ten sprinted to the finish. Five of them crashed heavily and Denis Verschueren, competing in his first race as a professional, won the event.
The start and finish of the race in Ghent started to attract hordes of fans and by the end of the 1920s, the Ronde had become the pinnacle of the cycling season in Flanders.