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U.S. Development Team in Belgium
The Real World: Belgium
If they can survive the wrath of their Belgian housekeeper -- and the horse-meat dinners -- America's top young cycling talents just might make it through the crucible of European racing and become bona fide stars.
ByBill Gifford
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Barely 5 miles into the race, the team radio crackles to life.


"This is Lucas," a voice says. "Rear flat."


Noel Dejonckheere floors it, his Saab wagon accelerating past the other team cars in the race caravan as he scans the road for his rider. Soon he spies a red-white-and-blue USA National Team jersey wobbling along the right side of the bumpy, narrow lane that winds through the farm fields of West Flanders.


"Get off your bike," Dejonckheere barks into the radio as he skids to a stop inches from Lucas Euser's rear wheel. Before the car stops moving, a stocky mechanic leaps from the back seat of Dejonckheere's vehicle, with a new rear wheel in hand. He slams the spare into place, Euser hops back on his bike and Dejonckheere, who has appeared by his rider's side, pushes the young American off, sprinting alarmingly fast for a man in his 50s.


Just as swiftly, Dejonckheere jumps back into the driver's seat and peels out, steering with one hand as he grabs the radio with the other. Soon the car is behind Euser, who is gasping and weaving as he tries to outpace the 22-car caravan. He's not making much progress, and it looks like his day might be over soon.


"Use the cars," Dejonckheere says into the mike.


Then, louder: "Use the cars!"


But the pint-sized climber--who looks like the love child of Bobby Julich and Mary-Kate Olsen--stays his course, suffering in the open wind, straining mightily to pass a Belgian team vehicle. In the fierce headwinds of Flanders, a rider like Euser is doomed without the shelter of a peloton, and he doesn't seem to know that he should tuck in behind the cars and let them drag him back to the huge, 190-rider field. Dejonckheere screeches around another team car, startling the driver, and rolls down his window.


"Use the draft from the cars!" he screams.


Euser shows no sign of having heard. But just then a Belgian rider who had also flatted flies past, surfing from bumper to bumper. Euser watches him, then tucks in behind a car marked with the QuickStep logo and takes a breather for a minute. The pace slows, and Euser swings out and sprints around a corner--only to lock up his brakes and skid sideways, barely missing a parked truck.


"Dammit!" Dejonckheere shouts, thumping the steering wheel. "He doesn't know how to ride his bike!"


Of course, Lucas Euser does know how to ride his bike, well enough to merit a place on the Webcor professional cycling team and notch a handful of top-10 U.S. finishes in 2004. Those results, plus a bit of e-mail begging, earned the 22-year-old Californian a coveted invitation to Belgium, where the U.S. Cycling Federation runs a high-octane development camp for young American riders. He's darn lucky, in other words, to have Dejonckheere hollering at him.


In a sprawling stucco house in the sleepy town of Izegem (pronounced "Is-A-Hem"), Dejonckheere and his part-time staff nurture--and occasionally scream at--about a dozen young U.S. cyclists at a time, none older than 23, who spend from six weeks to three months living in Izegem and racing all over Europe in events ranging from local blue-collar Belgian kermesses (like criteriums) to multi-day stage races such as the Tour de l'Avenir, considered the Tour de France for young riders.


By exposing them to tough European races--and to the strangeness of living in Europe--the USA Cycling bosses hope to turn America's young talents into top-level pros. "My goal is to get as many Americans as possible racing in the ProTour," says USA Cycling chief operating officer Steve Johnson. "And you can't do that by racing in America."


Domestic U.S. races, the thinking goes, are too short, too few and too easy to let riders develop the horsepower demanded by ProTour teams. This is annually borne out in the world championship road race, where U.S.-based riders rarely make it to the finish. According to Johnson, power-meter data shows that a typical rider in a European race produces 10 to 15 percent more wattage than the average rider in an American race.


And the annals of U.S. cycling are full of stories of aspiring stars who signed with European teams, then lasted only one or two miserable seasons. USA Cycling figured that if its young talent had a sort of European base camp, a little oasis of America they could call home while they immersed themselves in the harsher racing, the transitions might be more successful. Dejonckheere, a former pro who also knew a thing or two about American hotshots, was the natural candidate to run this experimental development camp. In his own career, which spanned the late 1970s to the late 80s, he won more than 70 races, including six stages of the Vuelta a España. After his retirement, he worked as a team director for Motorola in the early 1990s, guiding a young George Hincapie and Lance Armstrong, among others. Even better, his hometown of Izegem was smack in the middle of Flanders, the heartland of Belgian cycling, which plays host to UCI-sanctioned races nearly every week of the season.


"Noel is one of the best tacticians I know," Armstrong has said. "And he's a cheap bastard." Dejonckheere doesn't deny either claim: He has stretched the program's $350,000-a-year budget as thin as Saran Wrap. When original sponsor EDS pulled out at the end of 1999, the U.S. Postal Service stepped in as a sponsor (followed by Discovery), but most of the funding comes from a group of wealthy cycling enthusiasts who run the gamut from movie star Robin Williams to the chairman of Wal-Mart.


So far, at least, it seems like money well spent. The dropout rate in cycling is notoriously high, but the Izegem program has turned out such hard-to-dispute success stories as yellow-jersey-wearer Dave Zabriskie, under-23 world-time-trial champion Danny Pate, former Discovery rider Michael Creed and neo-pro sensation Saul Raisin, who had a standout debut for Credit Agricole in 2005.


Dejonckheere, whose round face and rosy cheeks belie a no-nonsense, Darwinian approach, is the heart of the program. "Noel decides who comes here, when we race, who races, who eats, who sleeps--everything," Lucas Euser says. Like a good father, Dejonckheere doesn't miss much, but doesn't punish every transgression, either. "The last race we did, Noel predicted everything: when it would rain, when the field would split, what riders would be in the break," says Steven Cozza, a four-year veteran of Izegem. "If we had some dumb director, he wouldn't even notice all the mistakes I make. But I don't think I've impressed him once, the whole time I've been here."


"You won't believe what I'm about to do," says Els Dejonckheere, Noel's sturdy, brown-haired wife. Snapping a red-plastic garbage bag, like the kind used for medical waste, she plants her feet and yells, "Room inspection!"


She charges into a first-floor bedroom, and what she sees doesn't please her. Smelly trash bags droop from doorknobs, while dirty laundry oozes across the floor. "Look at this!" she shouts. "I told you to clean this up yesterday!"


Lanky cyclists flop down from the upper bunks, groaning and rubbing their eyes like sleepy toddlers. It's 9 a.m., early if you're 17 years old and ride a bike four hours a day. One kid crawls across the floor, picking up socks and underwear, some of which may date to the days of Dave Zabriskie, who first came to Izegem with the class of 1999. Els grabs the trash bags and tosses them into her own plastic sack, and marches out of the room with a warning. "This room better be clean in 90 minutes!"


It's the first week of August, and the house on Kortrijkstraat is full. There are 22 young riders here, eight of them juniors getting ready to go race in Austria, and from there to the junior world championships. The rest of them are settling in for the fall race season. In the words of Izegem alum Michael Creed, the house, which once belonged to Dejonckheere's family and was not built for use as a dorm, is "basically like a frat house, except with no chicks, and a bunch of guys with shaved legs."


You enter, if you dare, into what looks like an old auto-body shop, except with bikes instead of BMWs. Black-and-red Specialized team bikes hang from the ceiling, lean against walls, perch in mechanics' workstands. There are bike boxes everywhere; many of the guys arrived from the States just a week ago, for the program's late season. (There's a spring session and a fall session, and everyone takes a break during the Tour de France.) Inside a sort of wire-mesh cage, two mechanics are constantly at work, adjusting brake levers and installing SRM power meters. There is a garage for team cars, and a couple of storage rooms, one stocked with pasta, bread and jam; another is piled high with cases of bottled water. A third, windowless room turns out to be someone's bedroom: Lucky guy got a single.


Upstairs, there's a three-stall shower and a warren of bedrooms, each with two sets of bunk beds and varying amounts of dirty laundry strewn about. Be careful when sitting on a bed: That pile of clothes might conceal a snoozing athlete. "Napping is pretty much the highlight of our day," one rider says. On one wall hangs a poster of Dejonckheere in his prime, winning a stage of the Vuelta a España--while looking even younger (and baby-fattier) than any of the juniors.


Back downstairs, a doorway leads to a newish kitchen, with gray Formica counters, an easy-to-clean electric range and two good-sized refrigerators, perpetually stocked with cold cuts and cheese. There is always coffee. Turn left, and you're in the dining/living room, where Els serves dinner every night at the long table, and where, at any other hour of the day, one might find malnourished-looking riders eating sandwiches or muesli. When they're home, there's a lot of time to kill. They check e-mail (the house has wireless Internet). They lounge on saggy couches watching bad Euro-music videos or DVDs of Hollywood movies and Chapelle's Show. They talk, about everything and nothing.


They talk about the racing, which they like, because it is hard and fast. They talk about the food, which they deem okay, especially the pastry shops, which often materialize at the end of long training rides. They talk about what Els served for dinner the first week, a Belgian staple they are less keen on: horse meat. They talk about the local females, who seem to be either 14 years old or built like mother walruses. They talk about that smell….


"It smells like poop," offers Taylor Tolleson, to a chorus of snickering. "I just like saying 'poop,'" he admits. But he has a point: There's an earthy odor in the air, which may have something to do with the area's high cow-to--human ratio.


Most of the riders know each other from previous Izegem trips, or from races in the U.S. But almost nobody had heard of Tolleson until early 2005, in part because it was his first full season on the road. In March of last year, he finished seventh at the notorious Copperopolis road race in California, joining (and getting dropped by) a break that included Dave Zabriskie; he had no teammates, and carried water bottles in his jersey pockets. In July, he won a stage of Oregon's prestigious Cascade Classic, pipping veteran Scott Moninger on the line. Soon afterward, he got an e-mail from Dejonckheere--asking Tolleson's height and weight.


At 6 feet tall and 165 pounds, with muscles bursting out every-where, Tolleson looms over the whippety climbers Dejonckheere tends to prefer. A sharp blue point pierces one eyebrow. At age 19, he has already had an impressive athletic career, excelling at everything from youth hockey (homeschooled for most of his life, he was recruited at 16 to play for a boarding school in upstate New York) to off-road triathlon, with two XTerra junior world championship titles to his credit. For fun, he rides dirt bikes with his father, a former pro motocrosser; last summer, before USA Cycling called, they'd planned a jaunt up the Alaska Highway. Oh yeah, he also ran a 4:10 mile in high school. Says Max Testa, a cycling physiologist who is famous for his work with pros such as Levi Leipheimer, and who put Tolleson through the paces at his University of California at Davis lab: "I'm really expecting him to become somebody who has a name in cycling."


But in Izegem, Tolleson is surrounded by riders who might become names, too--like John Murphy, a freckle-faced, 21-year-old sprinter from Georgia who dreams of riding Paris-Roubaix, and Steven Cozza, last season's under-23 U.S. time-trial champion. Although they're all putatively on the same team, the riders at Izegem are also competing against each other, for the chance to ride at the Tour de l'Avenir and for the five U.S. under-23 slots at world championships. Only the best will be chosen; the rest can only hope to be invited back to Izegem in the spring.


"It's sink or swim," says Michael Creed. "Everybody complains about how hard it is to get to the front--but somebody got to the front. It's not impossible. I took it almost personally. When somebody tried to shove me out, I was like, 'I'm good enough to have this wheel--I don't care if you're screaming at me. I came all the way from America, and it was a long fuckin' plane flight.' Guys with that attitude do well: Tyler Farrar, Danny Pate and Zabriskie. Other guys wish their legs would come good."


Already, one kid from Oklahoma is walking around like a zombie. He got sick during yesterday's race and dropped out (getting yelled at by Dejonckheere). Today he's miserable, slumped in a chair, barely talking. He'd eaten big bowls of muesli and spaghetti before the race--"probably not the best idea," he says sheepishly.


Other riders succumb not to muesli but to boredom, tension, rain, or the lack of girls. Sometimes they snap, which is what happened a few years ago to Pate and Creed. After two solid weeks of September rain, they decided to commit suicide--in effigy. They made a life-sized dummy by stuffing old clothes into their USA Cycling jerseys and pants, then tossed the flailing man from a second-floor window, to the horror of passers-by. "It was one of those things, when you're younger, that just keeps escalating until you go over the line," says Creed. "And then you wish you'd never done it."


It's a small, sleepy town, Izegem, the kind of place where it's hard to eat a plate of frites without everyone knowing about it. Dejonckheere's spies are everywhere, calling him to report riders seen drinking milk shakes, flirting with girls, even (on rare occasions) downing beers at the cafes on the town square, with names like New-York and De Pekker.


The occasional caper is fine with Dejonckheere; in fact, like teenage drivers everywhere, riders have even been known to crash team cars and regain Dejonckheere's blessing, though it helps if you win a world championship within a few weeks of the offense. Things that aren't tolerated include buying hashish (legal in small amounts), and running down Kortrijkstraat wearing nothing but an O.J. Simpson mask and bumping into Dejonckheere's elderly mother.


Over the years, Dejonckheere and his staff have handed down a complex set of rules and maxims--"It's also important," he points out, "what they do outside of the races." Some of the rules leave riders puzzled, like the prohibition on melted cheese. (Supposedly, it has twice the calories of cold cheese.) Showering before a time trial is verboten, because it apparently fills your legs with water. Someone began writing these rules in a Book of Belgian Logic that, inevitably, was discovered, leading to major household tension.


In other areas of their lives, though, riders are left on their own. Just getting to Izegem from the Brussels airport can be a four-hour odyssey, requiring multiple train changes and mastery of the Belgian pay-phone system. Once there, everything is different: The "C" tap, for instance, produces hot water. Although the program is in its seventh year, there are no marked training rides or route maps, and a 90-minute recovery spin can easily turn into a four-hour epic around Flanders. "Everything here," sighs rookie Ted King, "is a trial by fire."


Everyone is looking at them. At least, it feels that way. It is dinnertime in a hotel banquet room, the night before the Ronde de l'Avenir, a three-day stage race for 19- and 20-year-olds, somewhere in northern France. "We never know where we are," shrugs Chad Beyer, whose Arizona home seems far away right now. "We just race."


More than 150 French riders are tucking into their dinners. The American guys look at their plates--a complicated salad involving carrots and beets, a plateful of rice and a bit of leathery chicken. Little pitchers of red wine sit on each table, for the team directors. Two of the Americans have already pushed their plates away. They go off to raid the breakfast bar and come back with jam, crackers and cello-wrapped muffins topped with what look like Gummi Bears. The others scan the room. Unlike at races back home, there are no friendly, smiling faces.


"Look at everyone," Tolleson says. "They all look…crooked." Pause. "I feel like punching someone."


Their base for the next three days is a cheap chain motel called Mister Bed, which features freeway views, flimsy walls and an all-night parade of tarty French women. Nobody sleeps well. In the morning they wake up and eat breakfast, followed by a race meal, two hours later. Then they drive to the start, dress, roll off, and almost immediately miss the breakaway.


"Hey guys, are you sleeping?" Dejonckheere says into the radio mike. "There's 20 guys off the front and we don't have anybody. You better go to the front and start working."


The race is fast: 45 kilometers in the first hour, across the rolling farm fields of northern France. Dejonckheere spies his best rider drifting backward through the cars. It's Steven Cozza, and he looks spent--sick, he says.


"Normally he'd be in that breakaway," Dejonckheere sighs.


In many ways, Cozza is a typical Izegem product. He took to cycling in high school, and soon was whipping Cat 3s in his native California--as a junior. He came to Belgium in 2002, and after a year learning to ride in pelotons of 150 or more, he began to get good results. In the house, he keeps mainly to himself, reading or updating his personal website; he's self-contained, a survivor. After this cycling season, he'll take off for a solo hiking trip on California's John Muir Trail; in 2004, he spent more than a month trekking in Nepal. Of the seven juniors who arrived in Belgium with him in 2002, only one other is still racing: Tyler Farrar, who signed with Cofidis for 2006.


Dejonckheere watches Cozza struggle to regain the peloton, alongside two other exhausted French riders, but soon the American vanishes from the car's rearview mirror. The peloton flies past stony farming towns and gleaming Allied war cemeteries. This area, the Somme, saw some of the bloodiest battles of the first World War, which left little pockets of well-tended headstones, commemorating the young English-speakers who gave their lives for a few yards of this ground. Dejonckheere can't see what's happening in the race, but hears via the radio that a 12-rider counterattack has broken free of the pack--including Tolleson.


When the commissaires patrolling the race give the okay, Dejonckheere zooms past the main pack--his right-side wheels flirting with the ditch--and notches in behind the chase group.


"Tolleson's got a nice position on the bike," Dejonckheere observes. That's not a given, even for riders with stellar physical gifts. Like some of America's best cyclists, including Tom Danielson, Bobby Julich and Armstrong, Tolleson came to cycling relatively late in life. Typically, their form and efficiency need lots of refinement, unlike most European cyclists, who start racing at age 12. The key for Dejonckheere is not whether the Americans win races immediately, but how much they improve. "It's the first time I've really seen him racing," Dejonckheere muses. "When I see him, I am thinking of George Hincapie."


Dejonckheere grins. Tolleson doesn't. The pack is doing 50- to 60kph, and he is suffering. He signals for a bottle, but someone attacks, and Tolleson grimaces, trying to hang on, then drifts to the back of the group, and it looks as if he might get dropped.


"C'mon, Taylor," Dejonckheere says, "stay at the front of your group. Stay at the front of your group."


"Noel," Taylor gasps into his radio. "How far to the finish?"


"Not far," Dejonckheere lies. "About 20k."


Even that is not the answer Tolleson wanted to hear. He's shaking out his legs now; he must be cramping. From the back seat, Luigi the mechanic says something in Flemish. Dejonckheere translates: "He can die five times, and still ride his bike."


Tolleson finishes 15th on the first day of racing, by far the best American. The others got stuck in rear-guard groups that basically gave up, losing about 10 minutes by the finish. After dinner, Dejonckheere dresses them down in one of the cramped rooms of Mister Bed. "If you're gonna race in the back, you're not gonna make it," he says. "I know it's a hard race, but it's a hard race for everybody, and if you're at the back it's 20 percent harder. There are no excuses. Eh, Brad?"


Brad Viera nods his head.


Dejonckheere repeats himself. "No excuses. No excuses."


Tolleson misses the break on the second day's stage. In the afternoon time trial, he sprints out of the gate too fast and takes 10 minutes to recover. On the last day, he also misses the winning move, but sprints across the line at the head of his group--one lap too early. He finishes the race in 28th place overall--not among the leaders, but toward the front of the bunch.


"Except I don't want to be in the bunch," Tolleson says afterward, a defiant attitude that does Dejonckheere proud. There are other encouraging signs. On the last day of the Tour, in a crosswind, Tolleson had put some of Dejonckheere's advice to the test, riding hard on the side of the road--in racing terms, he put them in the gutter, where there was no good draft. Two or three guys got popped from his group.


In the following weeks, he has some other good rides: eighth in a stage of the Tour de Moselle, a five-day race for under-23s; a win at a local kermis. As world championships approach, in late September, he's one of seven riders vying for the five U.S. slots.


But it also becomes clear that Taylor Tolleson is, at this point at least, no Tyler Farrar. There was never any doubt that Farrar was an alpha dog. As soon as he came to Izegem, he started winning races. A stone time-trialist with a killer sprint, he made breakaways and won races. Above all, he mastered the paradox of European racing: It's easiest to ride at the places it's hardest to get to. The front is easier than the back. The breakaway is easier than the chase. And it's better to climb with the leaders than to suffer with the sprinters at the back. The stars are the ones who have learned how to expend the least energy--except when it counts. This is why Farrar is riding for Cofidis in 2006.


The dream is always the same. The young rider--from Grand Rapids or Salinas or Charlotte--goes to Europe and shines there, is discovered, gets a place on a top team and soars to glory in the mountains of the Tour de France, like the unknown punk from Plano, or, before him, the smiling blond from Reno.


Everyone who comes to the crowded, smelly, noisy house in Izegem believes in the dream. It's why they come. And it's also why they leave, to go home for the winter until they can once again remember why they traveled thousands of miles to race in rain and mud against guys who looked like they'd just as soon stab them.


The season is over. The house in Izegem is empty, and quiet (and clean). Dejonckheere is packing for a much-needed vacation with Els. Worlds didn't go so well. Farrar was 10th in the time trial. Cozza, who was chosen instead of Tolleson, was 42nd. In the road race, the team missed the early breakaway--as usual--and had to chase hard. Farrar flatted in the last few miles, and the best U.S. placing was 119th, out of about 130. But Dejonckheere cheers himself with thoughts of the 10-day Tour de l'Avenir, earlier in that season. Farrar won a stage, and wore the sprinter's jersey for four days. But that's not who he's thinking about.


"You know Lucas Euser?" Dejonckheere asks. "The guy who didn't know how to ride in the cars? He finished the race! There were ProTour guys there who didn't even finish, and he did. That kid, a year ago, he was barely racing his bike."


Bill Gifford's biography of American adventurer John Ledyard was published by Harcourt in January 2007.

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