Lessons Learned

A world record was broken at the Memorial Van Damme athletics meet last night in the Heizel Stadium, Brussels. Meseret Defar ran the 2 mile in a time of 8:58.58.

It is an improbable story. Defar arrived in Brussels from Addis Ababa only the day before the race having, wait for it, taken part in Ethiopia’s millennium celebrations on Tuesday evening.

More improbable, in a stadium which saw 39 football fans crushed to death in 1985, was the following:

“Jupiler Blue offers every single spectator of the crowd of 47000 a free Jupiler Blue should a world record be broken at the Memorial Van Damme on 14 September 2007.

As soon as a world record has been broken the audience can collect their free Jupiler Blue at the bars.”

I hope the queue was orderly.

Vive La.....France?

Belgium continues to astound.

Some may remember that there was an election back in early June. Well there is still no sign of a government being formed. In fact the man charged with leading the negotiations - Christian Democrat Yves Leterme - managed to considerably complicate his task by confusing the French and Belgian national anthemswhen asked for a verse of the latter on Belgian National Day (21 July)!

Imagine the future Canadian prime minister belting out a verse of The Star Spangled Banner on July 1, or Ireland’s Bertie Ahern treating his public to a rendition of God Save the Queen on St Patrick’s Day.

Ironically, the country that Yves thinks he is on the verge of running might have come to his rescue. The doping shenanigans at the Tour de France have relegated his gaffe to second spot on the evening news bulletins. As if the Vinokourov revelations weren't enough, yesterday evening came the news that the Yellow Jersey, Michael Rasmussen, has been kicked out. And good riddance. Tour de Farce indeed.

Tour de Farce

High times for the Flemish at the moment. Today is their national day, an opportunity to take a day off work and to wave their rather scary looking flag.

The day commemorates the anniversary of the Battle of the Golden Spurs at the Groeningekouter, outside Kortrijk, in 1302 at which the Flemish defeated the knights of the King of France.

Almost 705 years later to the day and along comes another almost as momentous. On Monday the Tour de France came through Flanders, the stage concluding in Gent. It ended in a Flemish one-two, Geert Steegmans stealing in ahead of his more celebrated compatriot, Tom Boonen, to spark wild celebrations and much waving of the intimidating lion.

They were predicting that about 250,000 people would deluge the city, although in the end the rain deluged it more and about 100,000-150,000 turned up. The Witloof, wary of not being able to see a damned thing in a crowd of that size, headed instead for a smaller town - Deinze - just outside Gent. The town website - http://www.deinze.be/ - looked pretty. I had a good look around but I still have no idea where they took the photographs. Possibly Gent.

Although the peleton was due to pass by at 16.45 I arrived at about 13.15. Being three and a half hours early, I quickly found a vantage point beside a roundabout that I thought offered a decent combination of a view of the peleton arriving and also the likelihood of it slowing down as it passed by. There were about three of us at this point. I took out my book – the excellent Pornographer of Vienna by fellow Brussels resident Lewis Crofts - and started to read.

Engrossed in Egon Schiele’s artistic, and other, endeavours in Vienna, I failed to notice that I was gradually being pushed to the back of a considerable throng. By about 15.00 there were hundreds - perhaps even thousands - lined up along the sides of the road in either direction. Not the ideal position to be in as, at 15.15, the first vehicles from the 'caravane' began to pass. The 'caravane' is, I think, what everybody actually comes for. It is a procession of promotional vehicles from which employees of the firms sponsoring the tour throw sample products and other souvenirs out into the crowd. Never in my life have I seen such a clamour for miniature bottles of shower gel. Fifteen bodies in a writhing heap before one triumphant soul would emerge with a key ring. If anything was thrown in my direction I leapt out of the way. It all seemed a little bit commercial, a tad unfrench, until a car stormed past promoting a trade union.

The final cars in the 'caravane' were the official merchandisers. ‘Allez, allez’ they would cry, ‘c’est le tour de france, c’est la folie’, before proudly displaying all of the English they had learnt in England the two days before by continuing ‘don’t furget to buy yeur remembers for le children’. For twenty euros you could get your hands on a yellow bag ‘remembers’ containing a like-coloured tour de france t-shirt and cap. For about the same outlay you could also purchase a gaudy yellow umbrella with tour de france imaginatively emblazoned along it. I felt like shouting that the tour had left Britain so they could put their umbrellas away. Twenty minutes later the skies opened and I stood with about four other paraplu-less people under the nearest tree.

My despair was almost complete when not long afterwards, and before I could negotiate my cameras exit from my sodden pocket, a flock of 8 riders stormed past. Merde, I roared, to much amusement, possibly because of my accent or possibly because the cyclists were actually only a bunch of lucky cadets chosen to ride the stage well in advance of the pros. Ten minutes later another five cyclists whooshed past, stooped over their handlebars, panting for breath. I kept my cool this time, confident that the peleton could not contain people so clearly from four different generations.

Eventually, and not a minute to soon given that ducks might at this point have been considering package holidays to the sun, three helicopters reared onto the horizon. A frisson of excitement rose through the crowd. I abandoned my tree and knocked a few children out of the way - well they had taken most of the free stuff so I felt entitled - to get close to the road's edge. With half an eye out for irate parents bearing down on me with their shiny new umbrellas I managed to more or less miss the first three riders, who had amassed about a minute's lead on the rest of the pack. Zut alors, I wailed, regardless of my accent. Not to be denied again, I crouched down into professional photographer position, camera at the ready, for the arrival of the peleton. Four clicks of my digital camera later - and that is being generous as the final picture contains but a few shiny spokes of the back wheel of the bike that was bringing up the rear – they were gone again. The whole thing was over in about five seconds. I stood there, insistent that there had to be more, until there were only the original three of us left. Myself and two traffic cops.

Clijsters keeps her cool to lose

Kim Clijsters marked her last match on Belgian soil by doing what she does best, coming second.

Refusing to break the habit of a lifetime, Kim admirably managed not to let the raucous backing of a partizan 15,000 Antwerp crowd get to her. She went down in straight sets to the Frenchman Amelie Mauresmo. Normally in a tournament final Kim would lose to her rather dull, a-cupped, compatriot, Justine Henin (sometimes Hardenne).

There was some consolation for the home crowd however, as they took in the improbable sight of thighs that size doing the splits.

In a retirement move that stretches even Belgian definitions of hanging up the boots early, 23 year old Kim was moved to tears at the end of her match. It appears that she was crying over the fact that she somehow managed to blot her copybook by winning the 2005 US Open title, the only stain on an otherwise perfect run of defeat.

With marriage to American basketballer Brian Lynch – who plays for the world renowned Belgian side Bree – impending, Kim now wants to concentrate on domestic life and losing games such as scrabble and ker plunk, as well as her figure.

The Perils of enlargement

The Witloof takes a look at the enlargement process and makes some ridiculous comparisons to a football tournament and a music competition.

And so in the most easily predictable result since Don Quixote did more damage to himself than to the windmill, the European Commission has recommended that Bulgaria and Romania should be allowed to enter the European Union on 1 January 2007. You can read the entire (52) page turning report here.

With Bucharest and Sofia (in EU speak most countries seem to be referred to as their capital cities – ‘Warsaw today said that it was aware of the obligations of membership of the European Union but that it couldn’t give a fiddler’s toss about the free movement of goods or capital’.) now safely ensconced at Europe’s top table, the whole show now moves on to Croatia and Turkey. And then to Macedonia. Then to Serbia and Montenegro, possibly followed by Albania and Kosovo and why not Moldova? Ukraine? Where does the whole process end? Does it end? Does the visit of the Mongol hordes to Hungary in the thirteenth century bestow on them sufficient link to Europe to perhaps think of filling out the application forms?

Quite possibly if we take a look at what has been going on with the membership of the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). For some years now it has included in its ranks countries such as Israel, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan. Ok, so I can see that charity was probably necessary in the case of Israel. Can you imagine the reception the travelling fans would receive on an away trip to Tehran for a crucial qualifier in the Asian zone? But what the hell have Kazachstan got to fear? And more to the point what do they have to do with Europe? As a Danish pal ranted at me shortly after Denmark’s hopes of reaching the 2006 world cup had been fatally damaged during a visit to Astana: “Kazachstan?! That’s not Europe. That’s eight flipping (I’m sure it was flipping he said) time zones away!”

This time it is poor Belgium that has to make its way out central Asia to visit the Kazakhs. They’ve also managed to land themselves in a group with Azerbaijan and Armenia. Which makes me wonder what happens if the Nagorno Karabakh suddenly manages to free itself from the Azeri yolk? Would the Belgians have to play them too? Or what if Vlad Putin decided that the Chechens were getting just too Bolshy for even the Kremlin to maintain an interest? Might UEFA just think ‘Ah feck it, just throw them in with the Belgians, they’ll probably be somewhere out there now anyway’?

There are signs that the EU may not be about to expand at quite such a UEFA like pace. The European Commission, in ‘welcoming’ Bucharest and Sofia on board, has announced that further widening of the union is on hold until vital institutional reforms can be agreed. Now you look at this statement and conclude that given the fate of the EU Constitution that the reforms will never be agreed and therefore the enlargement process is complete. Indeed in the short term this is may well be exactly what happens; nothing. Eventually, however, the political will will undoubtedly be scraped together to ensure that things can still get done while the membership of the club continues to widen and possibly even embrace Turkmenistan. The different methods of doing this will be debated and will undoubtedly fail to stir the interest of the voters who will prefer to make jokes about Regulation X concerning the curvature of proper bananas. However, if it all sounds unimportant or dull, just consider the frankly shocking example of what has happened to the Eurovision song contest in recent years.

Much like UEFA, the organisers of the Eurovision song contest appear to regard geographical distance from Europe as a distinct advantage in gaining entry. This has led to familiar faces such as Israel, Morocco, Ukraine and Armenia popping up with regular abandon in Europe’s annual search for its ‘best’ song and it can only be a matter of time before Kazachstan knocks on the door.

Unlike UEFA, however, the Eurovision apparatchniks realised that the influx of new ‘talent’ could not be accommodated within the existing framework. Listening to the ‘musical’ offerings of 45 entrants would test the patience of even the most diehard eurovisionfreak. In response to this threat, they opted for a two tier system in which those with the worst record in recent events would have to qualify for the final. While this has had the desired effect of ensuring that not all 120 million viewers are asleep by the time the winner is crowned, it has had the (presumably) undesired consequence of making it more than likely that the victor will hail from one of the Nordic or Baltic states.

A quick look at the winners podium over the last decade should prove any doubters wrong. In the ten years between 1997 and 2006, they accounted for 5 of the 10 victories including a seismic 4 in a row between 1999 and 2002. Even in Abba’s heyday this was unprecedented. Waterloo was the only victory in the entirety of the 70’s. In the 80’s things brightened a little with Diggi-Loo Diggi-Ley from Sweden’s The Herreys and La det Swinge from the Norwegian Bobbysocks. But 5 from 10, it’s simply not fair. Something has got to be done.

The other major innovation of the previous few years, phone voting by the public, has failed to eliminate the political bias of the voting patterns. It has probably increased it. As Terry Wogan so eruditely put it when Denmark was awarding Sweden its annual ‘douze points’: “hands across the Skaggerak”. What is needed is to completely democratise the system. One vote should be worth exactly that, one vote. So if 36 million Germans vote while only 1 million Romanians do, the Germans have 36 times the impact on the final result. And because nobody is allowed to vote for their own entry, the result cannot be abused.

This is what is really up for grabs in the ‘vital institutional reforms’ that the Commission is referring to. Artificial voting schemes favour those tightly nit snow laden communities. Democracy must out. The one Commissioner, one vote rule needs abolishing. Qualified majority voting should be extended to everything. And if this sounds like anathema to many of the (smaller) member states they should consider the alternative: Nordica Baltica über alles.