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Ronde van Vlaanderen

2007 Ronde van Vlaanderen
Race details
Date	Early-April
Region	Flanders, Belgium
English name	Tour of Flanders
Local name(s)	Ronde van Vlaanderen (Dutch)
Nickname(s)	De Ronde
Discipline	Road
Competition	UCI ProTour
Type	Monument one-day race
History
First edition	1913
Editions	90 (as of 2006)
First winner	Paul Deman
Most wins	3 times: Achiel Buysse Fiorenzo Magni Eric Leman Johan Museeuw
Most recent	Tom Boonen

The Ronde van Vlaanderen (English: Tour of Flanders) is a road cycling race held in Flanders, Belgium. It is held every spring, exactly one week before Paris-Roubaix, and it used to be part of the UCI Road World Cup. It is now part of the UCI ProTour and is regarded as one of the 'Monuments' of the European professional cycling calendar.

German road racer Steffen Wesemann climbing the Muur (wall) of Geraardsbergen in the 2004 edition of the Ronde van Vlaanderen.

The race was initiated in 1913 by Karel Van Wijnendaele, a former cyclist. Initially not a big success, the race was interrupted by World War I, but continued in 1919. In the 1920s and 1930s, the race became more popular, and is currently considered to be the most important race in Flanders, where road cycling is very popular. The nickname of the race is Vlaanderens mooiste, or "Flanders's most beautiful". The town of Oudenaarde, through which the Ronde habitually passes, has a museum - the Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen - dedicated to the race.

The course of the race contains many steep hills, often paved with cobblestones. While it is often compared to the Paris-Roubaix race in that both contain many cobbled sections, de Ronde's inclusion of many steep, and often cobbled, short hills make racing very different compared to the flat Paris-Roubaix.

The exact route of the race does not change much from year-to-year. The last major change was the inclusion of the steep Koppenberg climb in 2003, having been refurbished from its previous state of disrepair. Spectators make a sport called couperen out of trying to watch de Ronde pass by in as many points as possible [1].

Belgian cyclist Roger De Vlaeminck riding the Koppenberg in the Ronde van Vlaanderen. De Vlaeminck won Paris-Roubaix 4 times.

• "Only those who are in top condition can say that the Ronde is not hard. For everyone else, it's the Way of the Cross." -Andrea Tafi

Few riders have won both the Ronde van Vlaanderen and Paris-Roubaix in the same year:

1. 1923 Heiri Suter  Switzerland
2. 1932 Romain Gijssels  Belgium
3. 1934 Gaston Rebry  Belgium
4. 1954 Raymond Impanis  Belgium
5. 1957 Fred De Bruyne  Belgium
6. 1962 Rik Van Looy  Belgium
7. 1977 Roger De Vlaeminck  Belgium
8. 2003 Peter Van Petegem  Belgium
9. 2005 Tom Boonen  Belgium

The day before the actual race sees the cyclosportif (open) race version of de Ronde where amateur cyclists regularly participate in large numbers.

• The official Ronde van Vlaanderen website
• The Centrum Ronde van Vlaanderen website - available in English