"It was no different to Evenepoel at the World Championships — top guys only accept the very best": Thibau Nys defended amid criticism over Lokeren frustrations

Twelve hours after conquering the Koppenberg in one of the standout cyclocross displays of the season so far, Thibau Nys found himself wrestling a very different opponent at Rapencross Lokeren: chaos.

Dropped shifters, repeated bike swaps, a crooked cockpit and finally a sand-pit crash turned the European champion’s Sunday into a three-minute defeat and a visibly emotional finish. While some observers questioned the 22-year-old’s on-course frustration, Bart Wellens has offered a clear defence — and a reminder of how thin the line between brilliance and implosion can be for elite athletes.

“Look at Remco Evenepoel at the World Championships — it was no different for Thibau in Lokeren,” Wellens noted in his column for Het Nieuwsblad. “The top guys only accept the very best.”

Wellens, impressed by Nys’ Koppenberg heroics, argued that the reaction was not petulance but the inevitable boiling point of a fiercely ambitious rider suddenly betrayed by equipment after a near-perfect build-up.

At the heart of the drama sat an unlikely culprit: father and team boss Sven Nys, who openly accepted responsibility for the dropper shifter that triggered the spiral.

Wellens did not mince his words: “Sven took the blame, but my advice to him would be: stick to your job. Stay away from the bikes, you’re not a mechanic.”

The former world champion stressed that even tiny cockpit changes can detonate the confidence of a technical rider like Nys. “Even if those shifters only slipped a few millimetres, a cyclocross rider feels that straight away. It is mostly a mental thing. Give a rider a bike that feels even slightly different and they’ll notice immediately.”

Sven Nys had already explained that he had filed the shifters in attempt to improve grip, admitting the modification wasn’t sufficient under race load — and Thibau Nys confirmed the cascade that followed: “a series of circumstances” that left him changing bikes three times in a lap before crashing in the sand.

For Wellens, the key is resisting the urge to draw conclusions from one bad day. “That does not change the fact that Thibau made a huge impression on the Koppenberg — though for me it was not a surprise.”

Only one element raised an eyebrow: how long Cameron Mason held Nys’ wheel on Saturday. “What did surprise me was how long Cameron Mason could stay with him. Thibau even got annoyed and kept looking back. That is something Sven clearly cannot train out of him.”

Nys ultimately finished 15th in Lokeren, but few inside the sport saw anything more than a brutally timed mechanical meltdown — and evidence of how high his own bar has now risen. As Wellens suggested, the reaction was not weakness but expectation. Elite riders do not tolerate average. Nys’ weekend offered both ends of that spectrum.

With the European Championships looming, the Belgian now faces an important reset — not to rediscover form, but to turn fire into fuel. If Koppenberg Nys reappears, Sunday will soon feel like a footnote.