Pure, art

The Koppenberg. A name synonymous with the Spring Classics, and Flanders in particular. Usually the famed cobbled climb is scaled on 23mm rubber at high speed, if you're lucky enough to be at the front of the great monument. If not, a slippery scramble, hard plastic cleats struggling for purchase on stones polished to a hard sheen over hundreds of years. A Belgian winter should be no time to add rain, mud and cyclocross bikes to the mix. Merde! It's exactly the right recipe for the hardest of the hardmen to shine, if they can under those many layers of filth. Bike racing stripped back to its barest bones, revealing the true heart and soul.
It is a good case for black bar tape though, yet being PRO, most still choose to rock the white, at least for a few minutes of the one hour of pain.