Cyclocross Meme Features: A Non-Exhaustive Review

Some cyclocross features are the stuff of legends, others ... are not

If we are being honest with ourselves, the vast majority of cyclocross courses are pretty unmemorable. Courses are largely a string of turns and straights, mostly on grass—it is called field riding, after all. However, it is the unique features that break up those repetitive sections that create memorable and, for a special few, iconic venues.

Last week’s run of Koksijde, Gullegem, and Zonhoven had me thinking about course features. Koksijde is iconic basically for 80% of its course, Zonhoven has De Kuil, and Gullegem had, well, that dopey set of whoops. No one said every feature had to be a good one.

One of the cool things about cyclocross is that there are so many different kinds of courses and features. For this post, I was thinking about waxing philosophic about what features mean to a cyclocross course and a cyclocross race and then trying to come up with different categories or something like that.

For better or worse, my taxonomy didn’t really make it past the first category—meme features.

Memes are all the rage in cyclocross in recent years, so I am guessing readers have a good idea of how the whole meme-industrial complex works. In this case, meme is shorthand for features that are varying levels of lulz-worthy and tough to take seriously. And to stick with the bit, I tried my best to come up with a corresponding meme for each. Who said this isn’t a Pulitzer-caliber publication?

As always with these things, the features below are presented in no definitive order. Feel offer your suggestions of ones I missed in the comments below.

Pinwheels

Ok, so I said these weren’t going to be presented in a particular order, but yeah, there really can be only one when it comes to the title of King of the Putrid Meme features.

Pinwheels have been a staple among wildered and nonplussed domestic race directors for years. To qualify for consideration here, features must be present at UCI races. Fortunately for us, Brussels Universities Cross in early 2020 and then the course in Rucphen opted to add pinwheels in recent years, so thanks(?)

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly why pinwheels are such trash features. I feel like if I had to present a case for why they suck, I would have to defer to Louis Armstrong’s definition of jazz—if you gotta ask, you’ll never know.

Thinking back to that 2020 race, I remember race organizers making the argument that fans would be able to see riders for a longer period of time, and I guess technically it provides good opportunities for sponsor banners, but yeah, no. I think I would be willing to accept an ironic pinwheel, but those organizers seemed entirely earnest about including it.

On a more personal note, one concerning development for me was creeping pinwheel-ism in the Chicago Cross Cup this season. After moving back home over the summer, I was excited for my first CCC as a Chicago resident, only to be greeted by a pinwheel at the very first race of the season at Schiller Park. I was not expecting to have to jump into my new home scene with a vengeance, but that race started a season-long crusade to rid the series of the vile features that ended with the organizers for the final race at Montrose Harbor trolling me with the threat of moar pinwheels.

The Chicago Cross Cup took pride in trolling me with pinwheels this year. © Zach Schuster

Despite all this, I will say that I have an ethos of trying to see the best in people and—I guess in this case—scorn-worthy cyclocross features, and I will say that Ethan’s photo of the pinwheel at Rucphen from a few years ago was pretty cool.

This photo from Ethan was pretty cool tbh. © Ethan Glading

The VIP Barge

If we try to do a scientific assessment of when the meme feature meme was born, patient zero was really that two-weekend run at the beginning of 2020 when both the Brussels pinwheel and Antwerp floating VIP barge thing were foisted upon us. In retrospect, there is probably a thinkpiece about how those two dumb things were apt given everything that happened in the world shortly thereafter. IDK.

I remember writing about the pinwheel and then the thing that ultimately became known as Floaty Cross while still at Cyclocross Magazine. Bill and I were still frenemies from competing outlets then, and I remember tipping my cap to him for the outstanding work he did covering the floating barge.

For those who do not celebrate the entire catalog of Belgium’s meme features, the feature in question was present at the 2020 Belgian Cyclocross Nationals in Antwerp. As we know, Scheldecross takes place adjacent to a river, and so to roll in a special VIP section, organizers decided to float it in. VIP sections are obviously a big deal for Belgian races, so on some level, you have to give organizers some credit for thinking outside the box.

A look at the Floaty Cross barge VIP area from Bill. © Bill Schieken

Like many meme features, the Floaty Cross barge was pretty silly and did not materially affect the outcome of the races. Riders just kind of rode onto it, rode around it, and then went back to the sands of the Scheldecross course. Obviously, the feature could have leveled up from meme to epic if the gangway was narrow and without a barrier so wayward riders could end up in the Scheldt River. But that did not happen.

Actually, you know what, on second thought, Floaty Cross kind of ruled. I mean, we’re still talking about it now. Bring Back the Barge 2023. I’m all in.

The Namur Stairs

Namur obviously has the best course in cyclocross—this is an inarguable fact—but even the best race in the history of the world is not without its warts from time to time.

Set on the grounds of the Citadel of Namur that is, spoiler alert, on top of a hill, there is a part of the course where the organizers need to get riders from an elevated portion of the Citadel down to the iconic cobbled climb up to the iconic off-camber. Despite its objective position as the greatest cyclocross course, the race at Namur is still relatively young, and thus organizers have still been open to trying new things.

For the section in question, organizers have settled on that kind of sidehill off-camber that then drops down to the cobbles below, but for one absolutely glorious, amazing, incredible, shining, exemplary race in 2019 they decided to try something different and OMG was it *chef’s kiss.*

To get riders to the cobbles below, organizers found a narrow staircase, looked at each other, and I can only assume they started chuckling like Beavis and Butthead.

Now riders didn’t per se go straight down the steps. No no, they threw some sandbags in there to make it, you know, navigable. Or something like that.

This might have been all and well, but Namur 2019 was one of the absolute instances of cyclocross weather in recent memory—cyclocross weather of course being the weather in which you race cyclocross, if you are not aware of all Bulletin traditions. It was cold and it rained throughout the entire race. For those who are aware of cyclocross traditions, this was the race where poor Eli Iserbyt was carted off the course, cradled in another man’s arms.

Since this was a stairway that went down to an elevated roadway, water and sand gushing from ripped up sandbags quickly accumulated at the base of the stair section by the beginning of the Elite Men’s race. Riders b-b-b-b-b-bounced their way to the bottom, where I swear at one point, Tom Pidcock was like waist deep in water.

The whole thing was an absolute shitshow. And for the sickos out there, it was absolutely glorious.

This feature was pretty ridic and its legend lives on.

The Niel Moguls

Jaarmarktcross is a race that’s on the ascendency. An off-brand race that takes place each year on Remembrance Day, the race leveled up to the Superprestige series during the pandemic season and had its Superprestigeness christened by a Laurens Sweeck win during the peak of the Sauce dramedy and the birth of the Is Laurens Sweeck Elite? Era © Micheal Boedigheimer.

The first Jaarmarktcross of the Superprestige Era took place on a Wednesday, so I can only assume that the race organizers stood around thinking that their course obviously needed more humps. I am assuming this because, like, what else can possibly explain the moguls?

In theory, moguls seem like a cool idea. The cycling x skiing connect is yuge these days, so there is obvious cross-over appeal. I can easily envision a cool section of humps that riders have to pick the best line to keep their momentum going. However, the Niel humps are not that. At all.

I'ma get, get, get, get you drunk, get you love drunk off my hump.

There are large humps that would make a camel proud, but the humps are pretty much on the right and the left, leaving a herky-jerky riding line down the middle that has the antithesis of flow. Anti-flow, if you will. Models in skiing were perhaps the first X-Games-ification of the Winter Olympics when they were introduced in 1992 with cool tricks and stuff, but the cyclocross moguls are a giant fun sponge.

While other meme features merely take, say, floating a boat down a river, someone had to exert some serious effort to build the Niel moguls, and thus the saddest thing about this meme feature is that someone invested some major sweat equity to create one of the most pointless features in UCI cyclocross. Next time you’re out, raise a glass to that poor person.

The Oostende Mega Flyover

Bill has often made this point that the Belgian equivalents of the Home Depot and Caterpillar are among the biggest sponsors of Belgian cyclocross and thus from time to time, we get some legit cyclocross features. The comically large flyover at the Oostende World Championships was one of those features. What better way to show off your construction wares than to construct a giant flyover across a highway?

The Oostende meme flyover was the result of a bit of ingenuity in course design. Organizers wanted a section on the beach, but the beach was separated from the rest of the course by a highway. Might as well build a giant bridge to connect the main part of the course to the sand. And construct a giant bridge they did.

Ok, this flyover was an impressive piece of construction. © Ethan Glading

The Oostende World Champs were held during the pandemic season, so we got to see some epic shots of riders racing along the seashore, but there were no fans there to appreciate the giant bridge save a few people watching from the condo buildings near the course. Since organizers took a hit by having to host during the pandemic, they were awarded a second shot at hosting in 2027. That means the meme flyover … will be BACK.

I don’t think I really had strong feelings about the mega flyover either way. It served a purpose and added some climbing to an otherwise flat course, so maybe the organizers were onto something? Got a flat track? Build a fake hill. Maybe it will have some legs, IDK.

The Fayetteville Stairway to Nowhere

One of my favorite Simpsons episodes is “Marge vs. the Monorail” for so so many reasons. This isn’t one of those reasons, but the episode closes with a gag about Springfield’s Escalator to Nowhere that sent wayward riders back down to earth once reaching the top. It is just too perfect that the show did a send-up of a questionable feature we often see on cyclocross courses.

When researching this feature, my thoughts first went to the stairway at the way back of the course at Merksplas, but upon rewatching, it does kind of make sense in the context of the section it is in.

The Stairway to Nowhere at Fayetteville, on the other hand, stands out like a giant stairway built in the middle of the course. Riders run up a bunch of stairs, and then they come careening back down to continue racing their cyclocross bikes. As a feature, it does not really add anything to the difficulty of the course or provide a location for a race’s key moment to occur. Thus, it’s just kind of there, begging to have its absurdity at least noted in a post like this.

The saving grace of the Fayetteville Stairway to Nowhere is it proved a great focal point for fans to gather, and the crowds at that part of the Fayetteville Worlds course were one of the highlights of the whole weekend. Being a part of that felt a bit like what I imagine a Belgian cyclocross crowd to be like. In this case, it just took a silly feature that is kind of meme-worthy to do so. So it goes, sometimes.

The Stairway to Nowhere did make for a solid spectating spot. © Zach Schuster

Those are a few of the cyclocross meme features that came to my mind. I am sure there are more, and with Belgian organizers often skirting that line between cool feature and meme, there are undoubtedly going to be more to come in the future.