"I love the Giro d’Italia but it will forever be tinged with sadness for me" - GCN's Jon Cannings

It all started back on the 16 June, 2004 – my birthday. At the time I was living and racing in Beveren, Belgium with a cycling-crazy couple called Patrick and Mieke. I was racing in the kermesse scene. Kermesses are races that are typically between 100-120km and take in many laps of a circuit between 5-10km in length, looping through a town or village centre each lap.

On this particular day the race was in Kruibeke, Belgium. I cycled to the race as I often did and being my usual OCD self, I needed to make sure my tyres were inflated properly – 120psi was the standard of the day back then. On arrival I approached a friendly-looking young guy and his helper and asked if I could borrow their track pump. I later found out the rider was a young Wouter Weylandt and the helper was his father.

A fortunate puncture for many reasons

The race got underway and a few laps in I got into a breakaway with the Kermesse King, Guy Smet. He is a rider whose stature is as big as his list of victories, even back then. He's currently won 444 races and counting. I remember him flicking his elbow for me to come through and give him a turn in my draft during the race. I couldn’t. I was on my absolute limit and he was cruising!

Fortunately I double punctured in a pothole that was so deep I’m amazed I didn’t end up in Australia. I had to quit the race as there aren't any support vehicles in these types of races.

I headed back to the finish area in the back of a vehicle in the race convoy. The problem was I had no spare inner tubes with me. I’d ridden to the race and hadn't thought about anything like this happening. I spotted Wouter’s father and explained my situation. Mr Weylandt handed over two Michelin inner tubes and despite my efforts wouldn’t accept any payment for them.

He then told me about his son and how he was third in the Paris-Roubaix U23 race two weeks before. I knew this young guy was going to be something special. He had the look and desire to be a pro. Wouter oozed the ‘euro appeal’ of a pro cyclist. Something difficult to explain, but in the mid-late 2000’s there was a look!

© Getty Images

The full euro look of the mid 2000s as modelled by Wouter Weylandt

As soon as I got home I Googled him from the race results. I went onto his team’s website which was Bikeland Bornem at the time. It was a local bike shop that supported a squad of around 10 or so riders. The website had his email address next to his rider profile so I added him on MSN messenger (similar to a modern-day WhatsApp for those too young to remember) and got chatting, mainly to thank his dad again for getting me out of a hole with the inner tubes.

We hit it off and I found it good to know someone on the ground at a race, rather than being a lone-ranger. There weren’t many Brits abroad in those races.

Dropping a mid-race clanger

I’ll never forget one incident with Wouter that season. I was feeling really good in a race in Bornem, the hometown of Wouter's team. I spoke to some of the Bikeland team and they told me how important it would be to win the race. I did a few big turns to control some moves and was still feeling good. It started to rain a little bit and normally my morale would drop at this moment, but no, I still felt so good, things were going well.

However, there was something else happening that day. England were playing football and I really wanted to watch it. What takes priority – bike racing or football? Ordinarily it would be bike racing but looking back I was feeling a little bit homesick and had convinced myself that watching the game would be a good mental boost. So I decided at a certain point in the race I would drop out so I could watch the match.

That’s where I dropped an absolute clanger with Wouter. It was a coincidence of timing really but I was chatting to him during the race and mentioned that I thought the girl working in his sponsor’s bikeshop, the owner's daughter was very good-looking.

Wouter put his hand on my shoulder, and replied in the friendliest way possible, “I know man, she’s my girlfriend.”

At that point I went bright red and simply grinned. He found it funny. I quickly informed him that I was stopping soon as I had to get back to watch the football. I couldn’t get out of there quick enough! There were a few chuckles then about my dedication to racing!

We kept in touch throughout the season, via messages mainly. He went on to be a stagiaire, a trainee essentially, at QuickStep for the final part of 2004 and I went home to England.

A year later, my cycling-loving parents had gone out to Belgium to watch some racing, and introduced themselves to Wouter who was by now an official pro at Quick-Step. He asked them, “Is Jon here? He should come out to race again!”

When they told me this I felt a warmth inside. A pro, a friend, riding for my favourite team, saying I should go back out to Belgium and race again!

The genuine essence of Wouter

We continued to keep in touch and I remember seeing a small article in one of the monthly cycling magazines about Wouter’s hair. It was about how perfect it always seemed to be. This made me chuckle, so I sent him a text message about it and he replied asking for a scan of it. So dutifully I did and he loved it. He was a proud man and carried off that Euro cycling look brilliantly. Always immaculate on and off the bike and earning the admiration of many.

When I found myself close to his neighbourhood for the team presentation of the 2007 ZLM Tour I sent Wouter a quick message to see if he was free to meet up. "Of course," he replied. It was raining but he still made time to chat to me whilst signing autographs and posing for photos with fans. This was Wouter through and through, always finding time for people in and around the sport he loved.

© Jon Cannings

Wouter always had time for his fans, signing autographs and generally being a nice guy

In the winter of 2007/2008 the Quick-Step team came for a fortnight’s training to a sports resort I was managing in Spain. Wouter was with them and invited me to go and ride with them. It was great to be out on the bike with a man that I had raced with years before. This time, I wasn’t just racing to keep up with him, it was also a squad that included riders like Tom Boonen and Paolo Bettini.

Wouter would often look around with his cheeky smile and grin at me to see how I was coping. He was someone you knew who just loved riding his bike and on his day, he was the fastest there was. I recall him asking me what a huge building on the outskirts of Benicassim was. When I told him it was a nightclub but I’d never been, his instant reaction was, "I would have been there on day one!" which had all the other riders chuckling along with him.

Seeing him at the Vuelta in 2008 was great. He was on the startline in Cudillero, and he was in great spirits as we chatted and shared a joke about something or other.

I was so happy for him. His career had already involved plenty of wins, but to win a stage of a Grand Tour was simply breathtaking. He’d finally managed to get that BIG win!

Winning a stage at the Giro d’Italia was undoubtedly his biggest career win. The 2010 Giro started in The Netherlands that year and the first three stages were in the lowlands. Wouter claimed that final stage in the lowlands, surviving the chaos of crosswinds and crashes to win in Middleburg - I remember it like it was yesterday!

© Getty Images

Celebrating a stage win at Middleburg in the Netherlands at the 2010 Giro d'Italia

A dark day for the Giro

Sadly. This was never to be repeated. On 9 May 2011 it all came to a very sad end. I remember sitting in the Wiggle office, the online retailer where I worked at the time. I was keeping an eye on stage 3 of the Giro d'Italia via Twitter updates. There was a message that Wouter had crashed while descending the Passo del Bocco. Further news was sparse. Crashes are part and parcel of bike racing but this was not an ordinary crash. The following events still haunt me.

My phone rang a bit later, it was Russell Downing of Team Sky, an old friend of mine. He was in the race and he told me that Wouter had passed away in the crash - he knew how close we were. Everything became numb in an instant. I went home from work, and tried to process it all.

To lose him was a big piece of me taken away. The cycling world is small, very small, and these events, though thankfully uncommon, affect us all. I still find it quite difficult to talk about the impact it had on me. But I look back on those times together with great fondness.

I think this is why, despite the incredible race that the Giro is, it's always overshadowed by the very sad memory that it holds for me.

I miss you Jongen.

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Jon Cannings

Head of Community

Former GCN Tech presenter, who has worked across Audience Development and the GCN App, now heads up our Community strategies