The Tour of Flanders (or Ronde van Vlaanderen, for all you purists) is about as big as one-day races get, perhaps rivalled only by Paris-Roubaix. As such, the pit area, a fenced-in town square on the edge of Bruges, is always frantic. Team buses try to park as crowds of VIP spectators try to get a glimpse of their favourite riders, stewards try their best to direct things with shrill whistle blows, and all of this was magnified by the fact that it was both unseasonably warm on race day, and the fact that so many names turned up to try and knock seven bells out of each other up the hardest cobbled climbs in northern Europe.
For my part, I spent an hour and a half darting around the paddock like a frantic mouse, sniffing out new and interesting tech. Flanders used to be a race where unusual setups would be used, but with the proliferation of disc brakes and the adoption of wider tyres, most racers just use their normal setups.
