GHENT SIX DAY
Riding with a track legend and going to the ultimate bike racing party in Belgium.
Imagine thousands of people packed together in a velodrome, drinking endless beers, listening to euro trash music, and watching the best track riders in the world battle it out.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Back in November, GCN invited me to come and experience the Ghent Six Day with them for some short docos, and I had an awesome time.
If you didn’t know, the Ghent Six Day is one of the most historic track cycling events in the sport. For six nights in a row, twelve pairs of riders compete against each other in all different forms of track racing, in front of packed-out crowds.
The racing doesn’t start until 7pm each night and goes on well past midnight. The riders are so buzzed with adrenaline that they often don’t get to sleep until 3 or 4 in the morning…
It’s a pretty wild challenge for the riders, but nevertheless, the racing is top tier – some of the best riders in the world have competed and won here. Sir Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish won in the rainbow bands in 2016, and the G.O.A.T. Eddy Merckx is also a former champion. Australia has a long history here too – Danny Clark, Scott McGrory and Matthew Gilmore are all multiple winners.
There were no Aussies racing this year, but Aaron Gate from New Zealand was representing our side of the world. I know ‘Gatey’ well, and it was awesome to see him mixing it up every night. If I was ever in doubt as to how hard the Sixes were, Gatey summed it up for me describing it as, “way, way tougher than doing a stage race. You’re on your knees by night three.”
It’s not just the stars that make the Ghent Six so special, the race is also famous for the track it is held on. Known as ‘T Kuipke, meaning the ‘little bathtub’, the track is only 166 metres long (shorter than the standard 250m), which means the banking has to be much steeper (kind of like the sides of a bath). Even for someone who’s seen their fair share of tracks, it’s insane to see up close.
Before the racing kicked off, I managed to organise to ride this famous track with a man who is synonymous with the Ghent Six Day: Iljo Keisse. Nicknamed ‘The King of ‘T Kuipke’, Iljo grew up a stone’s throw from the velodrome and completed his home race an amazing 18 times - winning it on seven occasions, before retiring last year.
Iljo is a stone-cold legend here, famous for his flamboyant racing style, as much as his wins. As he told me, “I knew how to put on a show for the fans, that’s a big part of the Ghent Six Day. It’s not just a bike race, you know”.
Always ready to entertain, Iljo would do wheelies across the line when he won events and take big risks swooping down off the steep track through tiny gaps to attack. Not only that, but his Dad Ronnie owns a bar across from the velodrome where everyone goes after the final night’s racing. I had a couple of cold ones there – it’s a cool spot.
Before Iljo arrived at the track, I was able to get a bit of practice in on my own. One of the Belgian team mechanics lent me Fabio van den Bosch’s actual race bike, and this thing was an absolute rocket! The bars were so narrow, no grip tape – just a pure racing machine. They probably didn’t know I hadn’t ridden on a track properly since the Majorca World Champs in 2007 when they agreed to lend it to me!
I’ll admit I was a bit nervous starting out, but within a few laps I was in the swing of things, and then they got the dernys out. Riding behind one of the proper motorised dernys they use every night, we hit 70kph flying round and round the track. I could feel the G forces as we swung out of the steep bankings each lap, it was so much fun.
By the time Iljo arrived, I was feeling confident enough, and we played around a bit, doing madison hand slings and some sprints together. I could instantly see just how naturally he rode the track… He’s still got it, that is for sure. It was real bucket list stuff to have been able to ride there with such a legend.
So off I went to the racing in the evening, not sure what to expect. I thought it might be just a track event with a bit of music, in reality, the Ghent Six Day is more a combination of a bike race and a nightclub (if you can imagine that…).
Down in the track centre, there are a thousand people milling around, drinking, chatting, all to the soundtrack of euro trash bangers. It’s a proper party. And then when you’ve had your fill there, you can go up into the stands and get a great view of the world-class track racing on show.
I loved how mixed the crowd was; young students, businessmen, old cycling fans, they were all there – and it was sold out every night. On one of the nights, my fan club even came down and we had a great session on the beers in the track centre, not really paying attention to the racing, just soaking up the atmosphere.
On the last night, my old racing mates Bert de Backer and Jens Keukeleire came down and we really got into it. The racing was pure pantomime, with the fans cheering the locals and booing everyone else. By the end, the Belgian pairing of Lindsay de Vylder and Robbie Ghys won the overall on the last race of the week – an epic hour-long madison. It was an awesome end to a great few days back at the track.
Honestly, I couldn’t recommend the Ghent Six Day more to cycling fans. It’s an epic night out, or – if you want to go long, a marathon week of beers and bikes in a great city.
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