Words and photos by Epic Rider Malaya van Ruitenbeek

As I was putting together my race schedule for May I stumbled upon a short Facebook announcement by Joris Birnie, the Dutch NeilPryde Bikes agent. He is constantly looking for ways to make the local riders more aware of the new brand that NeilPryde of course still is in cycling, and as such he posted that he would be attending the sportive “Boretti Classic” on 7 May. The only race I liked to participate in that particular weekend would be on the 8th, so I decided that it would be a nice opportunity to show off the bike to many riders, get some kilometers in the legs and just enjoy riding of course.

The weather forecast was great for the sportive and attracted even more riders than the previous editions, making for a very unusual traffic jam on Saturday morning at the highway turn off near the start venue of the sportive. Rolling my bike up to the sign on desk inside the velodrome of Amsterdam, the bike riders were coming from all directions as the parking spaces at the start venue were already taken. It turned out that more than 6500 riders attended the sportive and this was only the fourth edition. When I entered the velodrome to get my number, I had never seen so many riders together in the velodrome (the picture really doesn't show just how crowded it was) and Joris picked a perfect spot for his stand. We had a quick chat about his recent adventure with the other epic riders in Thailand and he then saw me off to the start line.


I had passed some befriended riders on the highway and gave them a call, but they were still waiting for the rest of their group to arrive. I quickly decided to ride out on my own, as it wouldn't be a problem to find a nice group to ride along with anyway. The sportive first followed the north side of the ringvaart, a canal that I often ride along, but this was an undiscovered part of the ringvaart for me. The course went on into the old polders east of Haarlem, where we rode on top of the dike. Here I found my first riding buddies and with the tail wind the tempo went up to a leasurely 40 kph. Just as this group got passed by a quicker bunch of riders the bridge we had to cross opened up for a small ship entering the harbor. This gave me enough time to make picture of a huge ship on the North Sea canal and catch my breath at the same time.

Up until then I had ridden on roads I was unfamiliar to, but I still knew quite well where I was. All that was to change once the bridge closed, we crossed the canal and we entered the recreational area Spaarnwoude. This part of the course took us over perfect bike lanes through an unusually wooded scenery for the western part of the Netherlands and riding wise this was the most enjoyable part of the ride (the tail wind might have had something to do with it as well of course). My new group wasn't even that much faster than the first one, but they rode with a lot more discipline and I felt comfortable riding both in front and at the rear of the group. We kept riding together until the first rest place at the race track at Zandvoort. The sportive organizers rented the track for a couple of hours so the participants could ride somewhere special. Unfortunately the track was reserved for a car race later in the morning as well and it turned out that we just missed the final time slot to get around the track by the same amount of time as we had been waiting for the boat. The line for the bananas and bottle refill was pretty long and I called my friends Henk and Marco a second time while waiting.

It took them a little longer to get there than I had anticipated, but it turned out they had been riding with a very big group with some novice riders as well. Luckily some other familiar faces were at the rest place so the waiting was filled was chatting and showing my bike. I am still trying to get used to the fact that my Diablo is attracting so much attention, but it makes for a nice conversation every single time. When the big group had all refueled we set off for the dunes together and we ended up talking about the race that we were going to participate in the next day together.


The second refuel stop was only 16k down the road from the first stop as the longest (150k) route both turned off and got back on track with the 105k route again just in between the 2 stops. Having ridden only 40 minutes since the first stop, my group wanted to keep on riding, but I saw another buddy of mine (Edwin) at the stop and decided to hop over to another group for one final time.
When I moved to my university town many years ago, I joined a new club and Edwin is one of the riders I first got to know at that time. He has given up competitive cycling many years ago but is still very active as a trainer in the sport. He helps a small group of young riders out on a personal trainer level and also helps many people with training schedules via a professional website and we started talking about that during the final part of the sportive. The conversation became so animated that I soon lost interest for the scenery and we were discussing many other matters as well.
The day had evolved from chasing down the final time slot for the race track together with unknown riders to leisurely riding and chatting with old friends and by the time we got near the velodrome the atmosphere was great. The final stretch along the ringvaart saw groups clenching together and most people were giving their best. It is always nice to see how everybody has his or her own goal during a sportive like this and what the sense of accomplishment does to people when they can smell the finish line. Ending up back at the NeilPryde stand in a mood like that was exactly what I expected from the sportive and I look forward to another cooperation with Joris like this!

Link to the ride

High-resolution pictures