Het Schelde Peloton
Watching a professional cycling race on television is like listening to a reading of a great novel. It is a slowly enfolding tale full of drama, surprise, and heroics. The cycling commentators are therefore master story tellers. When they get a chance to make a cycling documentary, you can be assured an awesome story.
Het Schelde Peloton doesn’t disappoint. It tells the story of five friends, who loved cycling, who wanted to become professionals, and who would train along the banks of the river Schelde in Belgium: Iljo Keisse, Wouter Weylandt, Bert De Backer, Kurt Hovelinck, and Dimitri De Fauw.
The groups trains hard, parties hard. Some win and some lose. They fall down and get up. They fall down and some stay down. Only three of them are still alive. Dimitri De Fauw committed suicide as he suffered from ongoing depression in the aftermath of a collision and the death of a fellow track racer Isaac Galvez. Wouter Weylandt died during the third stage of the 2011 Giro d’Italia.
I hope there is an English version of this Flemish television series. It is so well done. I can assure you it will be difficult not to shed a tear.