Support road.cc

Like this site? Help us to make it better.

news

Terror threat level headache for Belgian race organisers

Cost of extra policing could be "huge"...

An increase in the terrorism threat level is causing headaches for Belgian race organisers as they struggle to increase security.

Belgium is on level three alert for at least the next two weeks, reports Lorenzo Dejonghe of West Flanders television station WTV. That could mean a big increase in the cost of policing the first races of the season.

Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne on Sunday, March 1 and the Three Days of West Flanders from Friday 5 to Sunday, March 7 are the first two races that might be affected. The police will be on high alerts and organisers will have to figure out how to deal with the situation.

Three Days of West Flanders organiser Rik Goethals told WTV: "We must now wait and see what will be decided. Let's hope it's not too bad, but, for example, we might have to deploy double the number of police. The financial impact would be huge."

The hills of West Flanders host stretches of many of the Spring Classics, and are used by the Handzame Classic and Gent-Wevelgem. Normally the Ypres police send about 60 officers, but that number could be doubled by bringing in extra staff from other districts.

Sunday March 15 sees the 2.1-rated Kattenkoers from Deinze to Ypres. By then, the threat may have dropped from level three, but the organisers are taking precautions and recruiting extra marshals.

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

Add new comment

4 comments

Avatar
atgni | 9 years ago
0 likes

Went to see the Tour of Britain last year and I can't see how a million policemen could make any stage entirely safe from nutters.
We just rode up a side street at around the predicted time and cheered the peloton as it flew past. A police bike stopped at the end of the road a minute or so before they arrived, but only to stop the traffic as they went past and then chased after them again.

Avatar
slam that stem | 9 years ago
0 likes

Atgni you have a bright future in the diplomatic corps. Oi weh...

Avatar
atgni | 9 years ago
0 likes

Boston marathon bombing.

Avatar
mtm_01 | 9 years ago
0 likes

Would have to hope that noone ever does anything daft at these races. Can't think of any attacks off-hand that don't fall under 'annoying prank' like the tacks in the Tour de France a couple of years ago.

Latest Comments