stimulated by Zoetemelk, Bal won the Tour 50 years ago

NOS Cycling•today, 06:53

Pure fury is unparalleled fuel for the cycling legs. Just ask Kees Bal (72), the man who won the Tour of Flanders “in anger” in 1974.

“Pislink” was 22-year-old Bal fifty years ago, after all, Joop Zoetemelk. In the week before the high mass of Flemish cycling, Zoetemelk had ‘robbed’ him of a prestigious victory in a five-day race in Catalonia.

But on two steaks with rice and deep-rooted envy, Bal ended the week and the feud with Zoetemelk with the ultimate revenge.

‘Gain over anger’: how Kees Bal, stimulated by Zoetemelk, won the Tour of Flanders in 1974

Over the years, the memory of the blurred image of his victory fades, but Bal’s glory will not fade quickly. Certainly not this year. “Because it was 50 years ago,” says Bal, browsing among the relics in the cycling museum of Oudenaarde.

His nickname ‘Balleke’ is written there on the wall among the other winners in Flanders. Yet the basis of that ‘Zeeland triumph’ of March 31, 1974 did not lie in Belgium at all. But in Spain.

“The story starts a week before, during the Catalan Week. Back then it was a prestigious five-day event,” says Bal. “I win the first stage with a good five-minute lead over a large elite group with Eddy Merckx, Raymond Poulidor, Joop Zoetemelk and Luis Ocaña.”

I was pissed and grabbed Joop hard at the finish.

Bal remains in the leader’s jersey for all stages, including a time trial, and starts the final stage with a carefree four-minute lead. “And then Merckx gets it into his head to attack immediately from kilometer zero. He gets Zoetemelk with him. My teammate. An ideal situation.” You would say.

But Merckx and Zoetemelk never get away completely. Ball remains nearby and Merckx’s sports director shouts in the Belgian’s ear: stop, think about Sunday, think about the Tour of Flanders.

“Joop hears that, having been in the wheel all day, and attacks. In principle you don’t do that. Joop wins the Catalan Week and I am knocked out of the jersey.”

Ball was angry. Infuriating even. “I was pissed and grabbed Joop hard at the finish.”

That same Friday, the Gan-Mercier team will fly from Catalonia to Flanders, in preparation for the Tour that starts two days later. But that evening, when he arrived at the hotel in Ghent, Bal said that he would no longer sleep under the same roof as Zoetemelk.

Exasperated, Bal gets on his bike that same evening and rides from Ghent to Kwadendamme in Zeeland. To his mother. He doggedly washes his bicycle three times on Saturday and, as a provocation, wraps an unusual white ribbon around his handlebars.

On Sunday morning, the day of his victory, Bal finished a then customary cycling meal of steak and rice before cycling back to Ghent via the ferry at Terneuzen.

Reunited with the team in the hotel, Bal chews away his second steak and rice and his team leader sees that Bal is still worked up. Stay calm for a hundred kilometers, the team leader whispers to him, and then let loose.

After a selection on the Oude Kwaremont, the tormented and sharp Bal finds himself in a leading group of forty men full of favorites. Including teammates Zoetemelk and Alain Santy. The latter attacks.

It won’t happen, Bal thinks, not again. Praying is the only thing he can do: “As long as he comes back, as long as he comes back,” Bal hopes. And especially that Zoetemelk will not attack afterwards.

“The moment Santy came back, I quickly demarcated and cycled out all the frustrations from the Catalan Week.” Only at the finish line does Bal look back and see that no one has caught up with him.

1974: Kees Bal surprises with victory in the Tour of Flanders

“Gain on anger,” Bal calls it. After the finish the Catalan anger disappears more or less immediately. “Revenge taken,” Bal concludes fifty years later.

Did Zoetemelk have anything else to say? “Joop didn’t say much, that was usual. Joop was not a talker. Afterwards there was quite good harmony. It was like shaking hands, going to the doping control and going home.” Back to the village in Zeeland.

It is not surprising that the name Bal is not in the collective cycling memory. After the surprising and impressive victory in Flanders, he disappears from view.

“After the victory in Flanders, everyone naturally thought: that was a one-hit wonder. But that was because two weeks later I broke my ankle in a crash in the Amstel Gold Race. That was the turning point in my cycling life.”

22-year-old Bal sits helpless at home for six weeks, after three weeks he can walk a little and then his friends from back then say: “Hey, come out with me.”

“I did that and it was a lot of fun. And I stuck with it.” Away from a promising cycling career. He stopped cycling in 1979.

The regret came later. Not at first, Bal admits. “First comes the aversion to cycling and later you realize: cycling was my life. I always wanted to become a cyclist from an early age. It was in me and stayed in me, but I put it away. It’s there “It was in my character not to retrace my steps. That was my biggest mistake.”

Yet Bal realizes that you will remain the winner of the Tour of Flanders for a lifetime. The love for the bicycle has not disappeared either. On Thursday, Bal rode 125 kilometers over Sunday’s course with his cycling club. “Over the cobblestones and slopes. I still cycle regularly. There is a memory on every mountain I encounter.”

He always kept the excitement for Sunday’s race. “It’s a pity that we cannot see a real Tour of Flanders due to Wout van Aert’s crash. But perhaps others can stand up. And perhaps there will be another victor who is at the start of his career.”