Editor’s note: You probably haven’t heard of Jax Dierckx, but he knows more about betrayal than most people—both the kind that happens on pavé and the kind that pays his rent. This is about a time he decided to stop watching and start trusting again, if only in one simple thing.
The morning fog hung over the Bois de la Cambre like a gray blanket, thick enough that I could barely make out the cyclocross course as I wheeled my MX-Leader through the parking area. Cars with bike racks were scattered between the trees, their Belgian, Dutch, and French license plates telling the story of a sport that drew fanatics from across the Benelux countries and northern France every weekend during the autumn racing season.
I wasn’t racing today. Those days had ended twelve years ago on the Haaghoek cobbles, along with most of the cartilage in my left knee. But cyclocross in October was something I couldn’t stay away from, even when my phone buzzed with a text from a client whose cheating husband could wait until Monday. Some things were more important than other people’s betrayals—the sound of knobbly tires on mud, the particular grunt of riders pushing through barriers, the smell of coffee and frites and sausages and beer mixing with the earthy scent of Belgian soil torn up by racing wheels.
It was a Sunday afternoon in October 2018, the kind of gray, drizzling day that made cyclocross racing either magical or miserable, depending on your perspective. I locked my bike to a tree and walked toward the sound of cowbells and shouting spectators, already feeling the familiar mix of nostalgia and regret that came with watching other people do what I’d once done myself. Here, for a few hours, I could stop cataloging human deceptions and just watch people push themselves toward something pure.
The course was classic Belgian ‘cross: tight corners around trees, steep run-ups that forced riders to dismount and shoulder their bikes, muddy descents that rewarded bike handling skills over pure power. A lap was maybe two kilometers, but in conditions like these, it might as well have been the Paris-Roubaix.
I bought coffee from a vendor near the start/finish area and found a spot along the course where I could watch the race develop. My investigator’s eye automatically swept the crowd—noting exits, counting security, assessing threats—before I caught myself and forced the habit down. Today I was just another spectator with mud on his boots and coffee growing cold in his hands.
A young girl, perhaps ten years old, was standing beside me with her father, both of them wearing matching team jerseys from a local cycling club.
“Papa, why do they carry their bikes instead of riding them?” she asked in French, pointing to a rider shouldering his machine up a muddy embankment.
“Because sometimes, ma petite, walking is faster than riding,” her father explained patiently. “In cyclocross, you use whatever works.”
I smiled at that. “Whatever works.” In my line of work, that philosophy usually led to compromises I wasn’t proud of. Here, it was just practical wisdom about getting over barriers. It was a decent summary of the sport—pragmatism disguised as suffering; efficiency found in the most inefficient-looking movements. The father caught my expression and nodded in recognition of shared understanding.
“You race?” he asked.
“Used to. Long time ago.”
“Ah.” He studied my face with the attention of someone trying to place a half-remembered photograph. “Jacques Dierckx? From Vlaams Brouwers?”
I was always surprised when people remembered me after all these years. In my current profession, anonymity was an asset. Being memorable was a liability. But here, among people who shared this particular obsession, my brief racing career was a calling card instead of a complication. My career had been solid but unremarkable—a good domestique, reliable in the classics, but hardly the kind of rider who stayed in cycling fans’ memories.
“Guilty.”
“I was at Flanders in ’06. Terrible crash on the Haaghoek. You were in the break when it happened, no?”
The question hit like cold water. I’d trained myself not to think about that day, about what I’d seen in Tommy Van Beirendonck’s eyes in the seconds before everything went wrong.
“The first chase, but we were bringing them back,” I said, keeping my voice neutral the way I did when questioning hostile witnesses.
His daughter tugged at his sleeve, impatient with adult conversation that didn’t involve bicycles doing interesting things. He lifted her onto his shoulders so she could see over the crowd of spectators gathering along the course barriers.
“She wants to race when she’s older,” he said. “I tell her she should try cyclocross first—teaches you how to handle a bike in all conditions.”
“Not wrong. Though maybe start her on grass before moving to Belgian mud.”
We watched as the junior men’s race began, twenty riders between sixteen and eighteen years old attacking the course with the fearless enthusiasm that came from not yet knowing their limitations. They took corners too fast, jumped barriers with unnecessary flair, and generally rode like they were auditioning for highlight reels rather than trying to win races.
“Look at them go,” the father said admiringly. “No fear at all.”
“Fear comes with experience,” I replied. “Right about the time you realize bones break and careers end.” In my work, fear kept people alive. But it also kept them from living.
One of the juniors proved my point by attempting to bunny-hop a barrier section that clearly required dismounting. He caught his rear wheel, went down hard, and spent thirty seconds untangling himself from his bike while the rest of the field rode away. But he got up, remounted, and continued racing as if nothing had happened.
“Resilient age,” the father observed.
“Best age for learning. Old enough to understand technique, young enough to bounce back from mistakes.”
I envied that resilience, that immediate faith in forward motion. These days, I approached everything like a potential crime scene, cataloging what could go wrong before considering what might go right.
The elite men’s field was just beginning their warm-up laps, forty-odd riders testing lines and getting a feel for how much the mud would slow them down. I recognized several faces from television coverage of World Cup races—riders who’d made careers out of excelling in conditions that would terrify most road racers.
“Jax? Jacques Dierckx?”
I turned to find a man about my age approaching with the careful gait of someone whose knees had seen too many winters of cyclocross racing. He was familiar in the way that former teammates and competitors always were—weathered face, knowing eyes, the particular posture that came from decades of hunching over bicycle handlebars.
“Pieter Van Maes,” he said, extending a hand. “We raced against each other back in the day. You probably don’t remember.”
But I did remember. Van Maes had been a solid domestique for one of the Dutch teams during the mid-2000s, the kind of rider who never won races but always made them harder for everyone else. He’d been in the chase with me during that final Tour of Flanders, one of the five riders who were closing in on the leaders when everything went wrong on the Haaghoek.
“I remember,” I said. “You were strong that day.”
“Not strong enough.” Van Maes’s smile was rueful. “But then again, none of us were, were we? That crash changed everything for a lot of people.”
He didn’t know. After twelve years of investigating other people’s secrets, I could read the genuine confusion in his expression. He remembered the crash, the chaos, the end of careers—but not the moment of betrayal that I’d carried like a stone in my chest ever since.
Maybe that was the real difference between my two lives. In cycling, most of the time you lived with the consequences of split-second decisions made in good faith. In investigation work, you learned that most disasters had someone to blame, some chain of deliberate choices that led to inevitable conclusions. Sometimes the two collided.
The French father and daughter had moved closer to the barriers, drawn by the spectacle of elite riders warming up. Other spectators were clustering around the technical sections where crashes were most likely—the places where competence separated itself from bravado in the most dramatic ways possible.
“You still riding?” Van Maes asked.
“Every day. Got a steel Merckx the year after I retired. Been riding it ever since.”
“Christ, really? I go through three bikes a year just commuting to work. Nothing lasts like it used to.”
We walked along the course perimeter, following the flow of spectators toward the most challenging sections. The run-up had been carved into a steep hillside, forcing riders to dismount and carry their bikes up what amounted to a muddy staircase. At the bottom, a stream crossing on narrow planks added an element of balance that would become increasingly difficult as fatigue set in.
I found myself genuinely enjoying the conversation instead of mining it for useful information. Van Maes talked about his insurance business, his kids’ sports schedules, the eternal struggle to maintain fitness while managing adult responsibilities. Normal problems. Honest problems.
My phone buzzed again—probably the same client, or maybe Mme. Delacroix wanting an update on her husband’s gambling debts. I didn’t check. For the first time in months, I was more interested in what was happening in front of me than what secrets people were hiding behind closed doors.
“Remember when cyclocross was a winter training exercise?” Van Maes asked. “Something road riders did to stay fit during the off-season?”
“Before UCI points and World Cup series and professional ‘cross teams.”
“Before it became serious business.” He gestured toward the warm-up area, where mechanics were making final adjustments to bikes that cost more than most people’s cars. “These kids have equipment we could only dream about.”
“Equipment doesn’t teach you how to read mud or carry a bike efficiently.”
“No, but it helps when everyone else has the same advantages you do.”
The starter’s gun fired, sending forty riders into the first corner in a chaos of elbows, shouting, and the distinctive whir of knobby tires on wet grass. Within thirty seconds, the field was strung out, the strongest riders pushing the pace while the rest tried to stay upright in increasingly treacherous conditions.
I found myself analyzing the race with the automatic attention that came from years of professional competition. The early leaders were establishing position rather than trying to drop the field—smart tactics in conditions where a single mistake could end podium chances. Behind them, the main group was already fragmenting as riders discovered their limits on technical sections. Everything was visible, honest. No hidden agendas, no deceptions. Just the elemental truth of who was strongest when it mattered most.
“Look at these kids,” Van Maes said, gesturing toward the lead group. “Half of them weren’t even born when we were racing.”
“They’re fast.”
“They’re fast, but they don’t know how to suffer properly. Everything’s too scientific now—power meters, heart rate monitors, computer analysis of every pedal stroke. When we raced, you just rode until you couldn’t ride anymore, then found a way to ride some more.”
I watched the leaders negotiate the stream crossing, each rider choosing slightly different lines based on their assessment of risk versus time savings. The differences were measured in centimeters and split seconds, but in a sport where races were often decided by bike lengths, marginal gains mattered.
“Maybe that’s not entirely bad,” I said. “Science might prevent some of the damage we accumulated.”
Van Maes touched his left knee unconsciously—the same knee that had ended my career, the same joint that probably bothered most riders our age on damp October afternoons.
“True enough. Though I wonder if they get the same satisfaction from winning when it’s all calculated in advance.”
A crash in the main group provided punctuation to his observation. Three riders went down in a tangle of wheels and cursing, their carefully planned race strategies instantly revised by the reality of mud and momentum. They untangled themselves quickly—cyclocross crashes were usually spectacular rather than dangerous—but their chances of contending for the victory had disappeared in the time it took to remount and regain forward momentum.
“Bike racing,” Van Maes said with satisfaction. “Still fundamentally unpredictable.”
We moved to different vantage points as the race progressed, following the crowd’s migration toward sections where the action was most concentrated. At the barriers, riders were developing different techniques for maintaining speed—some hopping cleanly, others using a step-through method that was slower but more reliable in muddy conditions.
“You ever think about coaching?” Van Maes asked during a lull between passages of the race leaders.
“Thought about it. But I’m not sure I have the patience for developing young riders.”
“Different kind of patience than investigating, I suppose.”
He knew about my current work, though I couldn’t remember discussing it with him. Information traveled quickly through the small community of former Belgian professionals—who was doing what, who was struggling, who had found successful second careers.
“Coaching requires believing in potential that might not exist. Investigation is about uncovering what’s already there.”
“Cynical way of looking at it.”
“Realistic way. Half the kids who think they want to be professional cyclists don’t have the physical tools. The other half don’t have the mental tools. The ones who have both usually find their way to success without much help.”
Van Maes considered this while watching the lead group string out further. The Belgian rider who’d looked strongest in the early going was starting to show signs of fatigue, his technique becoming less fluid as accumulated effort took its toll.
“Maybe coaching isn’t about finding champions,” he said. “Maybe it’s about helping people become better versions of themselves.”
“Philosophy major?”
“Economics, actually. But a decade of selling insurance teaches you about human nature.”
The race was reaching its critical phase, the point where superior fitness began to separate from superior technique. The French rider who’d been sitting third throughout the race was now moving forward with the steady pressure of someone who’d conserved energy for exactly this moment.
“Your Frenchman’s making his move,” Van Maes observed.
“Not my Frenchman. But he’s racing smart.” I found myself appreciating the tactical patience, so different from the immediate gratification my clients usually demanded. “Want to make it interesting? Twenty euros on him?”
Van Maes studied the three leaders as they approached the technical section where most of the damage had been done throughout the race. The Belgian was still leading but looking increasingly vulnerable. The Dutch rider was holding second but seemed content to stay there. The Frenchman was closing the gap with each lap, his technical skills allowing him to gain time in small increments that would add up to victory if maintained.
“You’re on.”
The final twenty minutes provided exactly the kind of drama that made cyclocross compelling, as the race unfolded like a case I could actually solve through observation rather than deception. The Belgian’s aggressive early racing caught up with him when fatigue caused a clumsy dismount that sent him sprawling in the mud. The Dutch rider inherited the lead but couldn’t match the Frenchman’s sustained pressure on the technical sections.
With three laps remaining, the race was effectively decided. The Frenchman had established a gap that would only grow larger as his superior technical skills became more apparent. Behind him, the Dutch rider was holding second while the Belgian fought to maintain contact with the podium positions.
“Textbook ride,” Van Maes said, pulling out his wallet as the Frenchman crossed the line with a comfortable margin. “Patient, consistent, timed perfectly.”
“Experience usually beats enthusiasm over forty minutes.” I pocketed the twenty euros, thinking about how rarely my professional victories felt this clean.
We walked back toward the parking area as the awards ceremony began, the sound of the French national anthem mixing with the voices of spectators discussing the race and planning their evening around whatever football match was on television. The atmosphere was relaxed, convivial—the particular satisfaction that came from watching athletic competition without the pressure of personal investment in the outcome.
“You know,” Van Maes said as we reached our bikes, “there’s a veterans’ race next month at Overijse. Nothing too serious, just guys our age trying to prove they can still ride bikes without falling off. You should come out.”
I thought about that as I unlocked my MX-Leader from the tree where she’d waited patiently through the afternoon’s racing. The idea of pinning on a number again, of lining up with other former professionals who’d never quite gotten racing out of their systems, had a certain appeal. Racing again would mean trusting my body, my bike, my instincts in ways I hadn’t done since switching careers. It would mean choosing faith over suspicion, at least for forty minutes.
“You could train with us if you want—bunch of old guys who meet Saturday mornings in Grimbergen. Nothing too serious.”
Training with other people. The idea had appeal and terror in equal measure. My current fitness routine was solitary by design—early morning rides before the city woke up, routes chosen to avoid human complications. Joining a group would mean accountability, shared goals, the kind of trust I’d spent twelve years learning to live without.
“I work a lot of weekends.”
“Flexible schedule, though, right? Being your own boss?”
Van Maes knew exactly what he was doing, and I found myself admiring his technique. He’d identified my objections and was methodically addressing each one, the way I’d learned to guide reluctant witnesses toward uncomfortable truths.
“I don’t have a ‘cross bike anymore.”
“So, race what you’ve got. That Merckx has seen worse conditions than riding around some grassy fields.”
Van Maes was right. The MX-Leader had carried me through eleven years of Belgian winters, through rain and snow and the kind of weather that made most cyclists retreat to indoor trainers, through investigations that took me into neighborhoods where expensive bikes disappeared overnight. A cyclocross race on the grass fields around Overijse would just be another adventure in a long partnership between rider and machine.
She’d been reliable when everything else in my life had become complicated.
Racing her would mean trusting her—and myself—in ways my current profession had taught me to avoid. It would mean accepting that not everything could be controlled, predicted, or investigated in advance.
But maybe that was exactly what I needed.
“I’ll think about it,” I said, surprising myself by meaning it.
“Think fast. Entry closes next week.”
My phone rang before I could respond. The display showed Mme. Delacroix—probably wanting to know if I’d photographed her husband at the casino yet. Standard work that paid the bills and slowly poisoned my faith in human nature.
I looked at the phone, then at Van Maes, then at the MX-Leader waiting patiently against her tree. For once, the choice seemed clear.
I declined the call.
Van Maes climbed onto his bike—a modern carbon fiber machine that looked like aerospace engineers had designed it—and rode away with a wave, leaving me standing beside my vintage steel frame in the gathering dusk.
I rode back to the Gare du Midi through Brussels in the fading afternoon light, taking the long route through Uccle and Forest that avoided the worst of the Sunday evening traffic. The MX-Leader rolled smoothly over wet pavement while I thought about Van Maes’s invitation and what it would mean to race again, even at the veterans’ level.
Racing had given structure to my life for over a decade—training schedules, competition goals, the clear feedback loop of effort and results that made every day’s work meaningful. Since retiring, I’d found different sources of motivation in my investigation work, but there was something appealing about the simplicity of bicycle racing that couldn’t be replicated in other contexts.
At a red light in Saint Gilles, I found myself beside a group of young cyclists heading home from their own afternoon rides. They were discussing training plans, upcoming races, equipment choices—the eternal concerns of people who’d organized their lives around the pursuit of speed on two wheels.
One of them noticed my bike and nodded approvingly. “Beautiful Merckx,” he said in English. “Classic build.”
“Thanks. She’s been reliable.”
“You race it?”
“Used to race other bikes. This one’s for everything else.”
“Everything else is still racing,” another rider said with the wisdom of someone young enough to believe that cycling was the most important thing in the world. “Just different competitions.”
The light changed and they rode away, their conversation resuming immediately about intervals, power zones, and whatever scientific approach they were using to pursue marginal improvements. I followed at my own pace, thinking about the comment that everything else was still racing.
Maybe he was right. Maybe every ride was a form of competition—against traffic, weather, the gradual decline of aging muscles and joints, the accumulated weight of responsibilities that made simple forward motion increasingly precious.
The train to Ghent was nearly empty, most weekend travelers having made their journeys earlier in the day. I found a seat in the bike car and settled in for the forty-minute ride home, watching the Belgian countryside slide past the rain-streaked windows. Fields that had been green in spring were now turning the brown of autumn, preparing for the long winter that would drive most cyclists indoors or onto trainers until March brought the promise of better weather.
The train pulled away from Brussels with the particular rhythm that had carried commuters and cyclists between Belgium’s cities for over a century. I watched the industrial outskirts give way to farmland, thinking about the afternoon’s racing and Van Maes’s casual invitation to test myself again against a field of other former professionals who’d never quite made peace with spectator status.
By the time I reached my apartment in Ghent, I’d made my decision. Racing again, even at the veterans’ level, would mean acknowledging that I wasn’t ready to be purely a spectator, that some part of me still wanted to test myself against courses, conditions, and other riders who understood the particular satisfaction of bicycle racing.
It would mean training specifically, pushing my forty-two-year-old body to remember movements and efforts it hadn’t attempted in over a decade. It would mean risking embarrassment, risking injury, risking the kind of disappointment that came when reality didn’t match memory.
But it would also mean finding out if I still had the particular kind of courage required to line up with other riders and commit fully to whatever the race demanded. It would mean discovering whether the partnership between myself and the MX-Leader could handle the specific stresses of competition rather than just the daily demands of urban transportation and weekend rides.
The next morning, I called the race organizer and entered the veterans’ category at Overijse. Forty euros entry fee, plus whatever it would cost to get the MX-Leader ready for her first cyclocross race. I knew she wasn’t an ideal cyclocross machine, but that didn’t matter.
Some partnerships, I reflected as I carried my bike up the stairs to my apartment, deserved the chance to try new adventures together. Even if those adventures involved a lot more mud than either of us was strictly comfortable with.
The next morning, I called Mme. Delacroix. I’d been photographing her husband for three weeks, accumulating evidence of exactly the kind of behavior she’d suspected. Another marriage dissolving into mutual recrimination and billable hours.
“Mme. Delacroix, it’s Jax Dierckx. I’m calling to tell you I’m closing your case.”
“But you haven’t found anything yet!”
“I’ve found everything you hired me to find. Your husband is gambling again, losing money you can’t afford to lose, lying about where he spends his evenings.” I paused, watching my hands work the bar tape with muscle memory from another life. “The question is whether you want to fix your marriage or just prove you’re right to end it.”
“That’s not your decision to make.”
“No, it’s yours. But I’m not going to help you destroy what might still be salvaged. Try marriage counseling before you try divorce lawyers.”
I hung up before she could respond, then turned off the phone completely.
The following week, I started riding differently. Not training, exactly, but paying attention to efforts that I’d been ignoring for years. Hill repeats that pushed my heart rate into zones I’d forgotten existed. Technical sections in the Kalken Bottelaere that required the kind of bike handling skills I hadn’t used since my racing days.
The MX-Leader seemed to approve of the renewed intensity. Her steel frame absorbed the harder efforts without complaint, the Campagnolo components shifting with the precision that came from Italian engineering and proper maintenance. After eleven years of partnership, we were still discovering new possibilities together.
It felt like preparation for something important, even if that something was just a veterans’ race in a grass field outside Brussels on a November Sunday morning.
Race morning dawned gray and damp, perfect cyclocross weather. I arrived at Overijse early, wanting time to pre-ride the course before the veterans’ field assembled. The route was less technical than the Bois de la Cambre had been the previous month—flowing singletrack through grass fields, a few barriers, one significant climb that would separate the pretenders from the genuinely fit, and not so crazy that a road bike was completely out of place.
Van Maes found me warming up near the start area, his own bike gleaming with the kind of preparation that suggested he’d taken the race as seriously as I had.
“Nervous?” he asked.
“Terrified,” I admitted, surprising myself with the honesty.
“Good. Means it matters.”
Other veterans were gathering with the easy camaraderie of people who’d found a reason to keep pushing themselves beyond reasonable limits. Former professionals mixed with ambitious amateurs, united by the shared understanding that age was something to be negotiated with rather than surrendered to.
I pinned my number to my jersey—43, the same age I’d be next month—and wheeled the MX-Leader toward the start line. She looked out of place among the modern carbon fiber machines, but she belonged here as much as any of us.
“Gentlemen,” the race director called, “remember this is supposed to be fun. Try not to prove me wrong.”
The field lined up with nervous laughter and final equipment adjustments. I found myself next to a former Belgian pro I’d raced against in the early 2000s, both of us carrying extra weight and decreased flexibility but still unwilling to accept spectator status permanently.
“Been a while,” he said in Dutch.
“Too long,” I agreed.
The starter raised his gun, and forty-three aging cyclists prepared to rediscover exactly how much they’d forgotten about racing bicycles in muddy conditions.
“Ready?”
I looked down at the MX-Leader’s top tube, thinking about eleven years of partnership that had been reliable but never truly tested. Today we’d find out what we could accomplish when pure effort mattered more than careful planning.
“Ready.”
The gun fired.
For thirty-eight minutes and forty-seven seconds, I remembered what it felt like to care about nothing except forward motion and relative position. The MX-Leader responded to race demands with enthusiasm that surprised us both, her steel frame providing stability on technical sections where lighter machines were skittering unpredictably.
I finished seventeenth out of forty-three starters in the 40-49 age group—respectable without being embarrassing, fast enough to hurt appropriately but not so fast that I’d been reckless with my forty-two-year-old body. More importantly, I’d spent nearly forty minutes thinking about nothing except tactics, technique, and the immediate problem of maintaining contact with riders who’d never stopped believing they were athletes.
Van Maes finished fifteenth, two places ahead of me but close enough that we’d pushed each other throughout the race. As we cooled down together, riding easy laps around the field while our heart rates returned to sustainable levels, I realized I felt better than I had in months.
“Not bad for an old domestique,” he said with satisfaction.
“Not bad for a guy who sells insurance.”
“So,” Van Maes continued as we dismounted near the results board, “there’s another race in two weeks at Koppenberg. Bit more serious—they have elite masters categories.”
I thought about that while hosing some of the mud off the MX-Leader at the bike wash station. Two weeks would give me time to train specifically, to push a little harder, to find out whether today had been beginner’s luck or the rediscovery of something I’d thought was permanently lost.
“Elite masters,” I repeated. “That sounds ominous.”
“That sounds like you’re interested.”
He was right. For the first time in twelve years, I was interested in something that had nothing to do with other people’s secrets and everything to do with my own willingness to suffer for purely personal reasons.
“I’ll think about it.”
But I was already thinking about it, already planning training rides that would prepare me for more serious competition, already imagining what the MX-Leader might accomplish with a rider who was finally asking her to be more than just reliable transportation.
The drive back to Ghent took me through countryside that looked different than it had that morning. Instead of terrain to be navigated safely, I saw potential training routes, hills that could build power, technical sections that could sharpen handling skills.
When I turned my phone back on, it contained seventeen missed calls and forty-three unread messages from clients who couldn’t imagine that their private disasters might be less important than one forty-two-year-old man’s attempt to rediscover what it felt like to race a bicycle through Belgian mud.
For the moment, their inability to imagine that seemed like their problem rather than mine.
I turned into my street in Ghent as the afternoon light was fading, the MX-Leader still caked with stubborn mud from Overijse and already eager for the next adventure we might attempt together. Some partnerships, I reflected as I carried her up the stairs to my apartment, deserved the chance to discover what they’d been capable of all along.
Even if those discoveries involved significantly more suffering than either of us was strictly comfortable with.
The next morning, I called the race organizer at Koppenberg and entered the elite masters category. Sixty euros entry fee, plus whatever it would cost to get serious about training again.
Some risks, I was learning, were worth taking purely because they reminded you who you’d been before life taught you to be careful about everything.
~ Fin ~