The Tour of Flanders (Dutch: Ronde van Vlaanderen) 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 Road Cycling World Cup . It is now part of the UCI ProTour.

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 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 most famous climb is arguably the Koppenberg climb, where the steep grade, narrow pass and (previously) poor cobblestone conditions have forced many racers to climb it on foot instead of on their bikes. An incident in 1987 where Jesper Skibby -- who was leading the race at this point and was followed by the race official's car -- fell over due to loss of momentum and was almost crushed by official's car, put a stop to the inclusion of this climb until 2003 when it was extensively repaired. It should be noted that while Skibby's foot wasn't crushed by the car, his bicycle was.

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

External link

• The official Tour of Flanders website