But of all the leeuwen, the undisputed king of the jungle is probably Rik Van Steenbergen.

In cycling, there are hard men, and then there are the Flemish. They are, as any road racer will tell you, even if they’ve never turned a pedal in Belgium, a breed apart. And among Flemings Van Steenbergen was – maybe still is – a man apart.

Nicknamed “The Emperor of Herentals” after the small village where he was born and raised, he was for 20 years (before the advent of Eddy Merckx in 1969) Belgium’s number 1 road cyclist. Recordkeepers, STS geeks and followers of his great rival, Rik van Looy, might demur, but Van Steenbergen’s legend wasn’t just built on results. It was built on sheer force of character, a character many Flemings like to believe sums up their national sensibility – tough, uncomplicated, home-loving, unpretentious. Van Steenbergen was a man capable of excavating a dyke with his bare hands and an old shovel of his dad’s (thus saving a village).

It’s this as much as the Emperor of Herentals’ many racing honours which will be commemorated in Aarselaar on 9 September during the 2009 Grand Prix Rik Van Steenbergen, a hurly-burly, round-the-houses run that attracts big cycling names from Belgium and abroad, measuring themselves against a legend in the sport’s heartland.

Van Steenbergen retired in 1966 and died in 2003, but the Grand Prix remembers him every year.

Flemish cyclists don’t become superstars by climbing mountains on two wheels – the topography’s against them. But their climate and social milieu has over decades produced its own unique challenges for generations of urban and rural riders: tiny, bone-jarring cobbled tracks in filthy conditions of slanting rain, icy winds and enveloping wheel-squirt, they pant up the vertiginous slopes of the Flemish Ardennes around Geraardsbergen. They constructed an image of themselves, their land and their sport before “image” as we know it had been invented.

For the Tour of Flanders each spring, a fair portion of the province’s entire population turns out to watch what is in effect a grown-up schoolboys’ bike race, as local heroes hurtle along the streets and alleys they have played in and on all their lives. Simply to find who can do it the fastest. Never mind if it’s for a cash purse or a bag of marbles or extra chocolate sauce on a waffle.

Never mind the road, never mind the weather. In fact, the worse the weather, the more heroic the winner.