Alberic Schotte

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Medal record
Competitor for  Belgium
Road bicycle racing
World Championships
Gold	1948 Valkenburg	Elite Road Race
Gold	1950 Moerslede	Elite Road Race

Alberic ("Briek") Schotte (September 7, 1919 – April 4, 2004) was a Belgian professional road racing cyclist. His generation of cyclists, that of the 1940s and 1950s, is called the "Flandriens".

Born and raised in Kanegem, West Flanders, he was nicknamed "Iron Briek" (IJzeren Briek) because of his incredible stamina.

One of the greatest cycling champions of the 1940s and 1950s, he was twice World Champion (in 1948 and 1950), won the last stage of the 1946 Tour de France and finished second in the epic 1948 edition, behind the unapproachable Gino Bartali.

His specialty, however, were one-day races: he twice won the Ronde van Vlaanderen (1942, 1948), Paris-Tours (1946, 1947) and Paris-Brussels (1946, 1952). Symbolically enough, he died on the day of the 2004 Ronde van Vlaanderen. The commentators during the race said that this couldn't be a coincidence: "God must have been one of Briek's greatest fans".

He also won the inaugural Challenge Desgrange-Colombo, a season-long competition intended to identify the world's best road racing cyclist, in 1948.

After his retirement as a professional cyclist in 1959, he remained active as a team coach for 30 years, mostly for the Flandria team. He died at Kortrijk in 2004.

Sporting positions
Preceded by Theo Middelkamp	World Road Racing Champion 1948	Succeeded by Rik Van Steenbergen
Preceded by Rik Van Steenbergen	World Road Racing Champion 1950	Succeeded by Ferdi Kubler