That was the best day of racing I saw in person this year, a basketfull of greasy fries in my hands, a hillside full of Dutch-speaking fans in brown coats all squirrelling away biertjes in between their ungloved fingers. Evie Stevens beat Marianne Vos on the final climb at Fleche-Wallonne.

You didn’t see that race? A women’s world cup event? You didn’t, why not?

It was on TV, the broadcasters had the finish on live during the first hour of the men’s race from when they went to the satellite feed. Who cares that blahbedyblahbedyblahbedy Belgian road team has a 4-minute break with 100km to go in a hilly mid-week classic? You didn’t get up early in the USA and stream a JustinTV feed to see girls race. You used that time to brush your teeth and shave.

Too bad. You missed a doozy.

Stevens in the finale had a teammate in big bruiser sprinter Canadian Clara Hughes, all the way up to the base of the final hill.

Then the red-haired Canuck did something she wasn’t born to do, leading out on a climb that turns across the face of a steep wall and peaks at 23%. She did so because her teammate’s biggest threat for the finale, Dutch all-rounder and multiple world title holder in cyclocross, MTB, track and now, this year, olympic road, Marianne Vos, was the last serious obstacle to a win for Specialized-Lulu Lemon.

And there you were, crapping in your bright linoleum-tiled bathroom you overpay for in urban midtown America, still shackled to a car lease, still working at a college job you thought would be good because it lets you ride on the weekends. None of your dress socks were bought by you.

And when Hughes is done, Vos takes over and sheds the other one, the nameless hanger-on from Team O'Drinka Something-Sweeter. Vos is in her element, the reigning champion here, she has won this race before.

Five times in fact. Usually without even a group at the base of this hill, the Muur de Huy.

It’s all painted in flowing, easy script - Huy, Huy, Huy, Huy, all up the two or three sinews of the crowded ascent.

Russians find this part of the race especially hilarious because of a dirty false cognate.

Vos lets loose and the crowd erupts, this Flem-o-phile gang of maybe 13,000 people, all kinda mostly getting drunk in the sun in April on a hillside in Wallonia. They cheer the Dutch woman around the bends as the motocam stalls and can’t follow her pace up the hill.

The fixed cams come on. One picks up an empty left hand swoop just at the 23% mark. Nothing is visible but fans in the background, cheering something in front of them, blocked from our vision by the bulge of an advertising fence at the roadside.

In the foreshortened foreground, Stevens comes into the picture first, and looks like she is winning, if only for the briefest of seconds. Just enough for an inhale and an exhale of disappointment. An audible schlumpphhh as it ripples across the fans.

Then Vos appears in our field of view, on fire. She’s ahead after all, she’s going to win!

The crowd goes wild. Cinderella Story. It’s in the hole.

It’s Marianne Vos in full Voeckler-face, a grimace too full of beautiful agony to ignore. She is on her way to six.

And then she isn’t. The steepest part. The Contador-killing part. The ‘Oh My God Here Comes Gilbert, Rodriguez, Evans’ meatcleaver part. That part.

Vos tries to win it there and it’s too long to the finish, and Stevens just holds on for dear life until 50 meters to go.

Stevens. She had a job on Wall Street. She wore sneakers on a borrowed mountain bike in Central Park during her first roadrace. She was rookie of the year at the Century Road Club Association of New York. She quit Wall Street.

She’s going to win Fleche-Wallonne, I start thinking. She’s going to fucking win this fucking mother fucker! I let out a war whoop and a pig squeal and a belch, a combo effect of excited blood returning to my veins and a very real need to be proud to be an American on this Muur de Huy hillside today.

The Belgians go kind of damply silent, and turn back towards the mayo on their french fries (I seen 'em do it, they drown 'em in that shit!) and ignore the now loser Marianne Vos. The race is over and some American won. The crowd grows weary of the toll.

This American ex-Death Industry Cogworker wins a Women’s World Cup Classic and I am doing helicopter spins in ecstatic revelry on an inclined church lawn, the congealed grease of a plastic cocktail trident in one hand and my Sony Nex-3 camera in the other. A battery door pops open and I lose a 53 euro 6-hour power source.