Algemeen Staff Stories - Marc Wauters, sports director, closes his very last Grand Tour in Madrid: “The traveling, being on the road, and the people: that’s what I’ll miss.”
When the riders in Madrid launch into their royal sprint a little after four o’clock this afternoon, Marc Wauters will step into the sports director’s car for the very last time in this Vuelta. His very last closing stage of his very last Grand Tour as a sports director. He has 47 Grand Tours to his name: 15 as a rider and no fewer than 32 as sports director, over a span of 30 years in the peloton. How many months of a lifetime spent away from home? He never kept count, but it’s certainly a lot.
After the Vuelta comes the Italian finale with Il Lombardia, but then Marc Wauters- known throughout the peloton as “Soldier”- will officially and definitively step down as sports director after 16 years. Retirement is not on the cards, though: with the velodrome of Zolder, where he is cycling manager at Circuit Zolder and where next year the Junior Track World Championships will be held, he has plenty of work ahead. He is also president of the Flemish Cycling School. “It will be a different life, that’s for sure. I’ve been away from home for weeks, months, even years all added up, and now I’ll be home much more often. That’s perhaps what I’ll miss most about cycling, to be honest: the traveling, always being on the road, all over the world, with a close-knit group of people.”
“Work? I’ve never worked a day in my life. The day you have to say- ‘I have to go to work’- you’d better quit.” It has been Marc Wauters’ mantra all these years. With heart and soul, serious when it had to be, and with a lot of joy. “It started cautiously, though. Would I like to work 60 days a year with the team as sports director? But 60 quickly became 90, then soon 120 and 130… The memories can’t be counted on one hand. The Vuelta alone. Sander Armée taking a stage in 2017—fantastic. The very next day we won again with Thomas De Gendt. And Tomasz Marczynski added two more. That was an incredible Vuelta for Lotto back then.”
Across those 15 years, there were also low points. Marc was there when Stig Broeckx suffered his horrific crash in the 2016 Baloise Belgium Tour. “Those images stay in your head. And still, whenever the race radio reports a crash, it’s always a shock and you just hope everyone makes it safely to the finish.”
As for his finest memory as a rider—he turned pro with Lotto from 1991 to 1993 and from 1996 to 1997, before hanging up his bike in 2006—Marc doesn’t have to search far. In 2001 he won stage two of the Tour de France, from Saint-Omer to Antwerp. “That was a surprise, I was the last survivor from a breakaway of 16 riders and managed to hold off the peloton. That day I also took the yellow jersey, in my own country no less. Those are things you never forget.”
Picture: Brecht Steenhouwer
