"It was inexplicable": Nils Eekhoff had to battle a rare injury to return back to the top

Nils Eekhoff won't remember 2025 for being a great season, but it's also a year from which the 27-year-old can draw a lot of optimism into the future. The Picnic PostNL rider's season had many ups and downs, from his biggest victory to the day, through multiple injuries, to a strong final push at the end of the year, the most important take away from 2025 for Eekhoff is the mental strength to battle through all incoveniences and the ability to always return to his best.

Eekhoff didn't start the season well with a painful crash in his first race, the AlUla Tour, where he broke his jaw and lost a few teeth. All the more impressive was his comeback a month and a half later at the Danilith Nokere Koerse. Because Eekhoff immediately won! And his only other professional victory dates back to 2023 when Eekhoff won a stage of the ZLM Tour, this one will easily rank on top of the Dutchman's palmares.

But that fall in Saudi Arabia wouldn't be the end to Eekhoff struggles as another setback came less than two weeks after his big triumph, at the Volta a Catalunya. There he suffered a calf injury that saw him sidelined for over a month.

"It was incredibly painful. That calf injury was much more severe and frustrating than my crash in the AlUla Tour. Back then, I was able to work and train at home with great focus. When you return to Nokere Koerse at such a good level, you feel like: 'Okay, now we're going to push on.' But when you're held back like that (by the torn calf muscle, ed.), that's incredibly frustrating."

And even though his body eventually recovered on its own, the right feeling would not come for Eekhoff for a long time. In fact, it took until the end of September for the all-rounder to find the spark again.

"It took a long time to really get that good feeling again after that torn muscle," the Picnic PostNL rider explains in WielerFlits podcast. "It was inexplicable to me. I worked hard, but I just couldn't get back into the swing of things. I felt good, but it just didn't show in the races. I could deliver a top performance, but after that, I was completely out of sorts. That got stuck in my head."  

After talks with team manager Pim Ligthart, Eekhoff resigned himself to the situation. He had no control over it. "I stopped worrying about it. If it was going to happen, it was going to happen. If not, then it wasn't. I kept training just to stay active. At some point, it got a bit easier, until I finally managed to avoid hitting the door. That was during the training after the Super 8 Classic. But you always need a result to get into a positive flow or calm."

Eekhoff certainly won't let this discourage him heading into 2026. "I'm always raced to get the best out of myself. I also really want to win for myself, for the team. And I don't think I'm achieving that often enough. But hey, it's something I always strive for and am willing to fight for."