ANALYSIS | The state of Belgian cyclocross: Is Thibau Nys now above Wout van Aert?

The question now being asked quietly but persistently in Belgian cyclocross circles is no longer whether Thibau Nys belongs at the front, but whether he has already moved to the front of the national hierarchy. The 2025–2026 winter has not produced a single defining moment that forces the answer, but it has produced enough evidence to make the discussion unavoidable. Nys has won, he has been consistent, and he has looked increasingly comfortable in races that used to expose him. Is he now above Wout van Aert? 

Van Aert has returned without winning, racing selectively and competitively, but there is no doubt about the fact that he has slipped a long way from Mathieu van der Poel and back into the pack behind. That contrast, more than any headline result, frames the current debate.

To be clear from the outset, there is still a clear number one in cyclocross. Mathieu van der Poel remains the reference point whenever he appears, and nothing in this season changes that. His absence from many World Cup rounds this winter has shaped the narrative, but it has not reshaped the hierarchy. When he shows up, he wins. The more interesting shift has been behind him, among Belgian riders, where Nys’s rise has coincided with Van Aert’s repositioning within the sport.

And now, it appears that Nys is the most likely Belgian to pick up a world title if Van der Poel slips up.

Nys’s 2025–2026 cyclocross season has been defined by repeatability. He has not raced the winter as a sequence of targeted peaks, instead, he has been present and competitive across different conditions and race formats. His World Cup victory in Dendermonde on Sunday was the clearest marker of progression, not because of the name on the start list, but because of the way he managed the race. On a course that rewards sustained power and punishes hesitation, Nys stayed in control, conserved energy, and finished the job with a perfectly timed sprint. That win did not come from chaos or circumstance. It came from authority.

Beyond that single result, his season reads cleanly. Five races wins so far, regular top-five finishes, and a clear step forward since last year. Against riders such as Laurens Sweeck and Tibor del Grosso, Nys has matched pace and decision-making. He increasingly looks like the man for the future.

Placed next to him, Wout van Aert’s winter tells a different story. Van Aert has not won a cyclocross race so far this season. That fact alone can be misleading if stripped of context, because Van Aert is no longer approaching cyclocross as his primary competitive focus. In fact, it has been several years now since he truly prioritised the winter. His calendar has been selective, his preparation shaped by road priorities, and his performances solid rather than spectacular. Sixth place at Dendermonde was not a failure, but it was revealing. He attempted to move late, found resistance, and did not reach the decisive group. That results goes with two second places finishes, and a seventh place finish from Antwerpen, so far this winter.

What stands out is not that Van Aert has been beaten, but who has beaten him. This winter, he has lost ground to riders in full cyclocross rhythm, younger elites racing weekly, and athletes who have built their season around this discipline alone. Nys fits squarely into that category. In races where Van Aert once returned mid-season and immediately imposed order, he now blends into a deep front group. That is not decline in the dramatic sense, but it is a change in balance.

At at Azencross Loenhout his form appeared far better but two punctured ruled him out of contention for a strong result; whilst at the Exact Cross the Team Visma | Lease a Bike rider has crashed once again and suffered an ankle fracture that has ended his season. 

Calling Nys the number one Belgian cyclocross rider depends on how the term is defined. If it means the rider most likely to win when all are present, Van Aert’s peak level remains formidable. But can he find the peak level this year? If it means the Belgian rider currently producing the strongest, most consistent cyclocross results, then the argument for Nys is increasingly hard to resist. This winter, he has been the Belgian reference point in World Cups. Van Aert has been the benchmark of reputation rather than outcome.

The role of Sven Nys looms over this conversation, but it now does so more subtly than before. Sven Nys is not simply a famous surname attached to a promising rider, he represents a lineage of professionalism in cyclocross. His career reshaped how the discipline was trained for and raced, and Thibau grew up inside that environment. The advantage is not mythical insight or inherited toughness, but exposure to detail, preparation, and perspective from an early age.

What matters in 2025 is that Thibau Nys no longer needs that context to explain his results. They now stand independently.

That independence is reinforced by his road career. Nys’ 2025 season with Lidl–Trek was not built around general classification ambition or volume racing. Instead, it focused on terrain that suits his physiology: short climbs, selective finales, and reduced group finishes. He did not collect a major World Tour victory, but he was consistently visible, regularly finishing inside the top ten and earning protected status within a competitive Lidl-Trek team.

Whilst his Tour de France debut may have been quieter than expected, it will prove to be vital experience going forward. And, his cyclocross explosiveness is not isolated to winter, it holds shape across a full road calendar.

This crossover raises the more provocative question: if Nys has overtaken Van Aert in cyclocross relevance, could the same eventually be said on the road? For now, the answer remains no. Van Aert’s road palmarès, versatility, and ability to shape the biggest races of the season place him on a different tier.

Even in 2025, where many claimed he was in decline, he picked up two iconic victories at both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France. He remains one of the most complete riders of his generation, capable of winning across disciplines and terrains, and we should remember that even if the very best we saw of him in 2022 and 2023 is now behind him. Nothing in Nys’s 2025 road season challenges that status.

But trajectories matter. Van Aert’s cyclocross priorities have shifted because his career has expanded. His best days in the discipline appear to be behind him not through loss of ability, but through redistribution of focus. What would truly help Van Aert, is if his limited cyclocross calendar finally yielded a spring classics win in 2026, something that he has yearned for desperately since his sole monument win at Milano-Sanremo in 2020.

Nys, by contrast, is still accumulating, still sharpening, and still adding layers to his profile. On the road, he is learning how to convert presence into results. In cyclocross, he is learning how to convert consistency into a truly elite level.

The hierarchy, then, is not static. Van der Poel remains alone at the top of the global rankings. From a Belgian perspective, Van Aert remains a reference point whose legacy is secure and whose level is still elite. But beneath that, Thibau Nys has moved decisively from potential to position.

Whether he is already Belgium’s number one cyclocross rider depends on perspective, but what no longer seems debatable is that he is the rider shaping the present, not the one defined by the past.

And if Mathieu van der Poel suffers a rare off day at any point this season, it currently seems that Thibau Nys is the man best positioned to claim a famous victory.