Enjoying the sunshine at the Tour of Qatar
Photo: © Ken Ilegems

The Ken Ilegems Diary 2004

Welcome to the Ken Ilegems Diary. After wrenching for one of the world's most powerful teams at Telekom, looking after the likes of Zabel, Vinokourov and Evans, destiny has landed Ken back on a bicycle seat. Follow him as he attempts to rejoin the world as a racer in the Classics heartland of Belgium.

Once upon a time in Mexico

Monday, March 8, 8.30AM

Almost one month after we got back from the first World Cup race in Moscow, it's time to go to Aguascalientes, Mexico, for round two. The Belgian team is much smaller this time - only Matthew Gilmore and Steven De Neef will participate.

A week ago I still had some doubts about attending this one because of my back injury, but the last days there was a lot of progression, so I took a well calculated risk and went anyway.

Our flight schedule was Brussels-New York-Houston-Aguascalientes; three flights and that means three chances to lose some luggage. Our first flight went well, but due to the special customs regulations in the US, we had to pick up our luggage, go through customs and check it in again. Normally it's not a big problem to do it, but this time the flights were close to each other and we had to wait quite a long time before our bags appeared on the carousel. We made it just on time, but on arrival in Mexico, we learned a few of the wheel boxes didn't make it on time. Flights two and three went smooth and around 8:00pm local time we arrived in Aguascalientes. We missed the arranged pick up from the race organisation, so we took two taxi busses to bring us to our hotel. After dinner it wasn't hard to fall asleep after a journey of almost 22 hours.

Tuesday, I transferred the track material to our box underneath the velodrome. Because we had only two riders, we had to share our box with South-Africa and Finland. No problem at all, except that there were only two keys and one of them had to stay with the organisers. So most times when we came to the track, we spent some time searching for the man who had the key.

The Mexican sun felt great after all the snow and rain we had the last few weeks in Belgium. Steven and Matt trained every morning on the road and every evening on the track on the days prior to the competition. Matt got himself a nice suntan doing this, but Steven looked more like a red tomato after two days. We couldn't leave such an opportunity to make some jokes about it, so Steven had to undergo it all. I should have known better, because on Friday I forgot to put on my sunscreen and the result was... another red tomato in the team.

On Friday, Steven started in the scratch race which was held in the evening so I had quite an easy day. Luckily I brought my computer, so some movies and games helped to fill the time. The race didn't go so well for us. Steven missed out on the good breakaway and although he tried to attack a couple of times afterwards, he wasn't able to put himself in the top 10, so no points for us in this event. Instead of going back to the hotel, I stayed in the infield to watch the other races. The keirin final was especially exciting. Also the kilo was interesting. I was surprised that they managed such good times on a concrete and slightly bumpy track and in windy circumstances.

One day later it was Matt's time to go on the track to compete in the points race. It was a strange and fast race, but no World Cup points for us this time as well. Matt finished 11th, just outside the points. After all this, our hopes were set on the madison race on Sunday. For this there were qualifications in the morning and a final in the late afternoon.

But our unlucky run of crashes that started in Moscow continued. Matt came down hard early in the race and wasn't able to continue due to a knee injury; this was just the start of what was about to happen.

After the last event on Sunday, I started to pack everything together with our coach Michel Vaarten. It went quite fast and we returned to the hotel soon. The hot weather in the last days dried out the grass in the infield, so I was covered with dust (it felt like that anyway). A quick shower did a miracle to me and I was ready for the farewell party. I had a great time, but realised a little later that the bus to the airport would leave at 4:30am the next morning. After a very short sleep (10 minutes I guess), I managed to be on time for the departure. I even had some time left to help out a South African girl, Anel Wasserman (who stayed in the room next to me and rode her first World Cup here), bringing her bikes down to the bus.

Once we were on the bus we waited. Instead of leaving at 4:30, it became 4:50. One of the Ukrainians had some problems understanding the Spanish speaking girl from the hotel, so it took a while to pay his bill. After this, we took off. About five minutes later, I heard Sarah Ulmer, who was sitting behind me on the bus, ask: "Hey, did anybody see X (I forget his name)?" The NZ team stared at each other, looking around and found themselves one member short, which was followed by a collective laugh from the entire bus. Their coach quickly made a wake-up phone call to the hotel and rescued the situation. The missing rider would take a taxi and join them at the airport.

At the airport there was more chaos. Aguascalientes isn't exactly what you call a big airport and with all the teams, all carrying a lot of luggage, leaving about the same time, things got messed up. The Mexican customs played their part in this. They opened every suitcase, box and bike bag, causing slowly progressing waiting lines at the check-in.

Once we got past this, we were on our way home. Same flight schedule as how we came, only now we had the baggage picked up, customs check and new check-in in Houston. And there we found half of our luggage wasn't there. We waited a while and asked around when our bags would come and heard that the plane was overloaded and our bags were still in Mexico. We went on without the missing luggage, but all this caused such a delay that we missed our connection flight to New York. The airline company put us on the next flight and so we travelled on.

I'm writing this somewhere above the Atlantic, tired and longing for a good night's sleep in my own bed. And of course, my first road training tomorrow, after being off the bike for more then a month now. The injury is not completely healed, but I got the green light to start training again, finally.

Looking back on this trip, I can conclude only one thing: I'm glad I was there. It was a great experience and I've met some interesting new people. Not counting Matt's crash, I really enjoyed watching the races there. An outside track, sunny weather, exciting races and an enthusiastic Mexican crowd in the stands every day - what more do you need to enjoy yourself?

Till next time,
Ken

Results