It may not have been noticed by everyone, but when Thibau Nys got off his bike afterwards, his hair almost lit up. With a white-blonde haircut, the Belgian from Baloise Trek Lions finished fourth in the Koppenbergcross, exactly one year after his victory last season. In the Leader’s jersey caught him and chatted about his own performance, but also the incredible day of teammate Lars van der Haar.
The Dutchman won solo on the Koppenberg. He drove away when everyone else drove into the material station and for a moment it seemed as if Nys was throwing the block at that moment. Not true, as it turned out. ‘I didn’t consciously leave a gap for Lars, everyone was just driving at a pace that was quite on the limit. Lars suddenly makes a big deal about it and that was it for me.’
So all credits go to his teammate. ‘Lars just drives away for fifteen seconds in two or three minutes, which was above the level of everyone today. After that I mainly continued to ride at my own pace. I wasn’t necessarily bothered by my poor start, my pace just wasn’t high enough today. That’s okay, I’m not really disappointed. I would have preferred to compete for the win, but that wasn’t an option.’
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Thibau Nys sometimes wanted something different with his hair
‘For me it was clearly a less feeling than in Overijse, but I did have a good day. This week I mainly tried to recover and wasn’t able to do much else, because the Koppenberg came again on Friday. I tried to look for freshness and my feeling today was quite nice and certainly not bad. However, others were more dominant’, Nys looks back on his level of form after he surprisingly won in Overijse last Sunday.
‘Now I hope to recover well for the European Championships. I wanted to finish as high as possible, but with the European Championships in mind, ultimately as economical as possible. The European Championships will be a completely different competition, I’m looking forward to that. I hope to have a flash again,” he concludes. Nys and associates will fly to Pontevedra, Spain on Saturday, where the European Championships will be held on Sunday. Sven Nys’ son will be easily recognized by the other passengers with his new hair color. “It had been the same for a long time, so it could be something different,” he laughs when asked about his haircut.
Bram van der Ploeg (Twitter: @BvdPloegg | e-mail: [email protected])
