Euskadi has cycling in its blood

Lawrence descends from a lineage of men and women shaped by the bike, heir to generations whose story was written under sun and storm, with hands hardened on cobbles and legs that learned to pedal before they ever learned to walk.
Each spring, Lawrence Naesen wonders whether there is anywhere that lives and breathes cycling like the Belgians do, anywhere the ground seems to tremble beneath the passing peloton as it does at home.

That place exists. He found it the day he joined Orbea. A brand that cannot be understood without its territory, inseparable from its mountains and valleys, built with the same devotion and respect to the bicycle that he has known since childhood. In its workshops and on its roads he recognised something familiar, an echo of the same rhythm that shaped his early years. Euskadi feels cycling to the very marrow.

He has seen the harshness of this land; he has lived through the elements that shape us, as they do in Flanders; he has seen riders of all ages out on their bikes every weekend, just like back home. He has felt a rush on steep descents, on steep concrete ramps, and on endless climbs. He has ridden gravel on compact tracks, across rough and technical ground, through mud, rain and blazing sun.

He has come to see that every Orbea bike is built from all of this, that the Basque Country is the testing ground for every bike that leaves our home, because our home has it all.

After a week riding Basque roads, one final chapter remained, the true essence of Naesen’s visit. Each spring, for more than a century, Itzulia, the Tour of the Basque Country, draws legions of fans out to the roadside, eager to experience the race up close.

If Lawrence Naesen has any unfinished business from his professional career, missing out on “the toughest week-long race in the world” is not among them. He says he was never selected and, given the brutality of the terrain and his profile as a classics rider, he never pushed for it. That is why he has enjoyed experiencing Itzulia from inside the Lotto–Intermarché team car.

From the very first stage, following Reuben Thompson in the TT, Law could feel that this crowd was different from any other.

But everything peaks on stage five: “it’s like Flemish races, they know all the names, they know all the riders.” The crowd fills every inch of every roadside, across eight brutally hard climbs and four thousand metres of elevation over 176 kilometres starting and finishing in Eibar.

And yet the crowd that makes riders feel weightless, like birds in flight, carried forward by the energy of the people. Baptiste Veistroffer crosses the line euphoric, amazed at how much strength the crowd can give when you are pushing for victory.

Now Lawrence is heading home. After these two weeks, he has come to understand that the frenzy, the burning passion for cycling, is not exclusive to the Belgian people. In some way, this land is that long-lost sister, a doppelgänger born under a different sky, driven by the same tradition.