Enter Joe Parkin, an American kid with dreams of racing the Tour de France but a road that led him first to the flat, wind-scoured farm roads of Flanders. “A Dog in a Hat” is his account of those years spent in Belgium – where he went from a naive outsider to a hardened pro battling the chaos of kermis racing.
Back in the days before Instagram likes and YouTube highlight reels, if a young Anglo-Saxon wanted to carve out a career in European bike racing, he had to take his chances the hard way.
No soigneurs to mix his bottles, no team chefs, and certainly no one to explain the arcane mysteries of Flemish cycling culture. It was all about grit, hunger, and sheer bloody-mindedness.
A Different Time, A Different World
Parkin’s journey begins with a bold move – leaving the comfort of America’s amateur racing scene for a country where bike racing is akin to religion, and foreigners are viewed with suspicion.
He lands in Belgium with a basic grasp of the language, no real understanding of the lifestyle, and a steely determination to prove himself.
It doesn’t take long for the reality to hit. In Belgium, a cyclist is expected to suffer, full stop. The races are war zones; wind howls across the fields, gutters are filled with elbows-out fights for position, and the local hard men – the flahutes – ride as if they’re being chased by the devil himself.
Joe gets his initiation fast. He finds himself in races where the tempo is relentless from the gun, where ‘easy miles’ don’t exist, and where the kermis culture – beer tents, wild betting, and grizzled ex-pros eyeing up the newcomers – forms a brutal backdrop.
The Belgian kermis is a special kind of madness. It’s not the grand tours or the polished WorldTour scene, it’s muddy, wild, and merciless. As Parkin quickly learns, the guys he’s up against are not dreamers, they’re lifers, racing for rent money and a hot meal.
Survival, Belgian Style
Parkin vividly details the life of a kermis racer: endless rain, wind that flattens you against the cobbles, and a diet of questionable nutrition washed down with Jupiler beer.
There are the “big” races, where the pace is brutal, but just as tough are the midweek kermesses where old pros mix with young hopefuls, and a few francs on the line means riders will kill themselves to make the podium.
He learns to read the races – who the hitters are, when the real moves go, how to hide in the gutter out of the wind. He learns how to handle himself in the peloton, where a moment’s lapse in concentration means finding yourself in a ditch or tasting Belgian tarmac.
There’s the ever-present risk of crashing – inevitable, really, when riders squeeze through impossibly tight gaps on greasy village roads.
And then there’s the off-the-bike culture; team bosses who are part drill sergeant, part-mafia don, soigneurs with potions of dubious legality and ex-racers who impart wisdom in between drags on their Gitanes.
The Razor’s Edge
Parkin pulls no punches about the darker side of the sport. He’s candid about the doping culture that was rampant at the time.
He never claims innocence or guilt outright, but he paints a vivid picture of an era where “preparation” was just part of the job. In Belgium, if you wanted to compete, you had to make choices – train harder, ride smarter, or find “help.”
Unlike some of his contemporaries, Parkin never sugarcoats his career. He’s not selling heroics, he’s telling it like it was.
He’s honest about the highs – those moments when he felt like he belonged in the European peloton – and the lows, when self-doubt and homesickness gnawed at him.
Why It Matters
“A Dog in a Hat” is more than just a racing memoir, it’s a time capsule from an era when Belgium was the proving ground for any young rider with ambitions. It’s raw, unfiltered, and at times brutally honest.
For anyone who has ever raced a bike in anger, Parkin’s story will ring true – the suffering, the exhilaration, the loneliness of life on the road, and the simple joy of being strong enough, even for just a day, to ride at the front.
It’s a book for those who understand that cycling isn’t just about watts and training plans, but about character, about heart. For those of us who’ve hung over the barriers at a kermis, beer in hand, watching the young hopefuls hammer around a windswept circuit, this book is the closest thing to being there.
Joe Parkin may not have made it to the Tour de France, but he lived the life, paid his dues, and told his story. And for that, we owe him a tip of the cap – or in his case, a chien dans un chapeau.
* * *
“A Dog in a Hat” by Joe Parkin
- Publisher : VeloPress (16 Oct. 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 205 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9781934030264
- ISBN-13 : 978-1934030264
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