A brief Belgian focus
I’ve written before about Thomas De Gendt , in what retrospectively seems like a terrible piece of work. But today, he deserves a brief revisit. We mythologise our heroes and icons, creating narratives around them that fit what we want to believe. The nearest example to hand is the portrait of Robert the Bruce in my wallet, a symbol of Scottish resistance to English tyranny. The myth goes that after repeated defeats in battle, it was the sight of a spider persevering to rebuild its web that galvanised him into commanding the Scots army to victory. The myth is exactly that, but has succeeded in projecting an image of Scotland as proud and defiant in who they are. In Thomas De Gendt I built up this myth of a man in control of his destiny. A man who existed for the nuance and inefficiencies of bike racing. A man who focused on different finish lines to everyone else, and could make everyone else suffer the consequences of his desires. At the Giro d’Italia ten years ago, when he ripped u