Track racing may not be your thing, but the Six Days of Ghent is an event that every cycling fan should experience at least once. Even if you don’t watch the race
Words Nick Christian Photography Kevin Faingnaert
A little-known fact about Ghent in Belgium is that it has two cathedrals. The elder is St Baafskathedraal, which dates back to 932AD and is home to a 15th century masterpiece by brothers Jan and Hubert van Eyck entitled ‘The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb’. The younger is a 25-minute walk through the student district, just a stone’s throw from the train station. First consecrated in the 1920s, its original structure was destroyed by fire in 1962, rebuilt and reopened in 1965. This place of worship is called ’t Kuipke and it’s home to the modern masterpiece known as the Six Days of Ghent.
Though the website of the town’s tourist board proclaims it to be ‘Mecca for cycling fans’, from the outside ’t Kuipke has little to reward the many who make the pilgrimage from cycling heartlands such as France, Italy, Spain and, more recently, the UK. Visually it is an unassuming, leisure centre-like concrete edifice, nestled at the heart of Ghent’s Citadelpark. On a sodden Saturday afternoon in mid-November, there are few hints of what is set to unfold within its walls over the next eight hours.
Make it inside, however, and that perception transforms. Perhaps not instantly, because to get to the arena you have to make it past the decidedly un-Christmassy market stalls. Beer is in abundance, naturally. If the walls were to collapse the ceiling would surely be propped up by stacks of 50-litre kegs. To line your stomach you can have either meat with your chips, or dairy, but you’re likely to be given one drowning in the other.
Souvenirs are plentiful, for a price. Care to acquire a postcard featuring the pixelated face of Fred Wright or Ethan Hayter, both of whom raced here last year? That’ll be €4 please. Apparently, cyclists’ image rights aren’t guarded as carefully as those of other top athletes. The stall selling Belgian national cycling jerseys – the sport’s classiest kit – does a roaring trade.
Part of the allure is summed up by cycling fan Richard Swann, who has travelled over from London and whom Cyclist quizzes while standing in a queue for snacks: ‘The decor, the tiredness of the building,’ he says, ‘it’s like going back to the 1970s or ’80s, but that’s what makes it cool.’
History in the woodwork
Having negotiated the myriad distraction
