Rick Ottema can call himself the cycling king of Beilen for a year. The bred Muntendammer won the King’s Round after an attractive match. He stayed ahead of Sjors Dekker from Tynaarlo. For Huub Deelstra from Hoogeveen it was the shortest race in his career.
Just as for a child selling old junk on the flea market is part of King’s Day, the same goes for northern cyclists going around in circles in Beilen. While many of their peers are already half drunk at the bar or are still recovering from the King’s Night Hangover, the elite riders demolish their bodies in a completely different way this afternoon: 80 kilometers of getting yourself going after every turn. It is quite tough, such a criterion, and it is sometimes underestimated.
Accordion effect
That certainly applies to the men at the ‘back of the right’, as it is so nicely called in cycling terms. The accordion effect of the peloton ensures that you can work even more after every corner. We won’t see too many of the big names that are at the start in Beilen there: Muntendammer Rick Ottema, Assenaar Bert-Jan Lindeman and Coen Vermeltfoort, who live in Leeuwarden, are the biggest names at the start. The latter, with roots in Schuinesloot just across the Drenthe border, came especially for this from his Brabant hometown of Vlijmen. Last year’s winner, Mark Prinsen from Heerenveen, is also present again.
Prinsen is already an appropriate name for a Koningsronde, but what about Evert Koning from Leek? How nice would it be, a King as the winner of the King’s Round? We have to keep dreaming about it for a while, because he is only twenty and is (still) a bit short against the aforementioned names. He runs in the last wheel almost continuously from lap one and is lapped with forty laps to go.
Chain problems
Huub Deelstra can only dream of that today, because the Hoogevener does not even get to one round. Chain problems ensure that he has to give up after 20 meters. His mood does not suffer, because for most of the race he stands along the course with a big smile.
He sees, just like skating queens Renate Groenewold and Antoinette Rijpma-de Jong, that the course seems to be in a fold early on. A group of eight with Lindeman, Prinsen and northerners such as Sjors Dekker (Tynaarlo), Thijmen Paardekooper (Valthermond) and Bart Kortleve (Ruinerwold) takes a lead of almost a minute, a light year by criterion standards.
Blonde Arrows
But that is without counting Rick Ottema. The armada of NWVG in the peloton ensures that the gap becomes a bit smaller, an unchained Ottema gratefully benefits. With NWVG’s ‘Blonde Pijlen’ Adne Koster and Redmer Dijkman he rides to the front of the race. He proves in the last laps that he is the strongest man in the race. Ottema pounds on and only Dekker can follow, but in the finish line the 30-year-old Allinq rider is the stronger of the two.
,,I actually thought that those eight would stay ahead”, says Ottema just before he gets the flowers on stage. ,,NWVG started driving, but the difference didn’t get much smaller. Then I started attacking myself at any time I could and with every attack from the peloton, another 5 seconds went off. Finally I made the crossing. Then it was just half a lap to rest and go again.”
Like it’s nothing.