"Merijn faked that the car turned off and people along the road pushed me up two to three kilometers" - Kenny Van Hummel shares his crazy experience from Tour debut in 2009

Kenny Van Hummel, who was definitely not a bad sprinter, made his Grand Tour debut in 2009 with the procontinental Skil-Shimano. During that Tour de France, it was not his fast legs that made the impression but rather his struggle in mountains where he was often seen fighting for bare survival against the time cut.

"I wasn't actually planning to go to that Tour, but in the spring of 2009 I won five races and finished on the podium a few more times. The team then thought: it's three weeks, if the pieces of the puzzle fall together, it could just be a hit with that crazy Van Hummel," he says fourteen years later in the online cycling talk show Cycloo.

The sprinter eventually finished in the top ten once in that Tour, but mainly gained fame for his fight against the time limit in all stages that required climbing. "I noticed during the altitude camp before the Tour that I did not have the fitness and form, not even to sprint. You need that condition to be fresh in the sprint, but I didn't have that at all," he says now.

With his then sports director Merijn Zeeman, they did everything they could, as Van Hummel now tells with an anecdote at Cycloo. "At one point Merijn faked that the car turned off. We rode up a mountain, where there were a lot of people. Then you ride through those people, where the commissioner was sitting behind Merijn's car with his motorcycle. And he stalled the car."

"I then shouted to everyone, which I could do in all languages towards the end of that Tour, that they had to push me," said the former rider. "So then they pushed me up two to three kilometers, because of course he was standing behind Merijn with his stalled car. He supposedly couldn't get it going again. Anyone who is not strong has to be smart," concludes Van Hummel, who ultimately had to leave that year's Tour on day seventeen after a fall.