Sven Vanthourenhout and Sven Nys were good friends until a few years ago. But since the 2021 Cyclocross World Championships in Ostend, something has broken.
The fact that Nys and Vanthourenhout used to be two hands on one stomach became clear in the last cross of Nys and Vanthourenhout in Oostmalle in 2016. Nys waited for Vanthourenhout in the last lap and the two crossed the line together in 24th and 25th.
But something broke at the 2021 Cyclocross World Championships. Vanthourenhout did not select Thibau Nys for the promises. “The fact that he did not select Thibau gave me the feeling that he wanted to show that he can make a decision that goes against me,” Sven Nys said in 2021 HLN.
Since then, Nys and Vanthourenhout have had little contact, but Vanthourenhout remains fully two hundred percent behind his decision at the time. And Thibau may have helped Nys.
“I am convinced that that decision has shaped him into the cyclo-cross rider he is today. He was not the rider he should have been then and who he is now,” Vanthourenhout now says. The newspapaer. More than two years later, Thibau Nys is one of the big favorites for the European title among the professionals.
