Yvonne Reynders paved the way for Belgian women's cycling

A big but unfairly barely known name in Belgian women's cycling. Thanks to her relentless battle for years, the multiple laureate Yvonne Reynders managed to ensure that from 2023, women will finally receive the same prize money as their male colleagues in every Flemish cycling classic. Although the pay gap between the two sexes remains wide for now.

On 4 August 1937, one Yvonne Van de Vyver saw the light of day in Schaarbeek. She later adopted her mother's surname, Reynders. From the age of 16, she rode bags weighing as much as 300 kilos of the black gold to customers in her parents' coal business in Antwerp on a tricycle. It gave her a tough constitution, cut out for sports. First she ventured into gymnastics, swimming and athletics. She particularly excelled in discus throwing. Of all the Belgian participants, she threw the disc the furthest in 1955 and 1956, winning the championship title twice.

Then onto the bike

But cycling was really her thing. She also climbed the steel steed professionally in 1955 and would not get off it again before 2007! For roughly the first 12 years of her career, she piled up the medals. At Belgian and world championships on the road, track pursuit and sprint, it rained for her 17 times gold, 14 times silver and 4 times bronze.

However, her path was not exactly a bed of roses. Indoor training for ladies was not obvious. No way, like the men, were they allowed to train in Antwerp's Sportpaleis. When one day she was unmasked in her male disguise, she envied the man who briskly yelled at her to leave the track at once by riding nicely alternating up or down, depending on where the screamer had taken up post. It even got her so high that her middle finger went up in the air. Once, she 's made a long nose at a bunch of macho cycling tourists who were out to cut her loose when she just had the guts to join them at the back. But things turned out differently: at the crucial moment, she triumphantly outdistanced the gentlemen with mouths falling open from panting and amazement.

So no Sportpaleis, but training on the rollers in the basement. And there she turned out to be a born acrobat. She enjoyed performing her tricks during sports evenings or in cafés, and they also brought in some money. Fixing a tube while pedalling, solving a crossword puzzle ...? You only had to ask. Because in terms of sporting and financial support, female cyclists were the poor relation in those days. They could whistle for starting money and the prize money wasn't much either: '100 francs and an appelflap', Yvonne liked to call it. Although every now and then a welcome gift would fall from the sky at the finish line as a reward for the winner: a mattress, a piece of furniture and even a washing machine.

Yvonne Reynders will go down in history as the woman who fought for a better financial status of our female cyclists.