Joris Nieuwenhuis heads to Cyclocross World Championship without pressure: "The highest achievable is the podium"

Joris Nieuwenhuis suffered for months with shingles. Partly because of this, he was only able to ride four crosses this winter. The Dutchman can therefore travel to Liévin for the Cyclocross World Championship without pressure.

In the four crosses in which Nieuwenhuis participated, he finished third twice and eighth twice. Especially his third places had to give a good feeling. "Especially the third place in Maasmechelen after Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert was of course a milestone, but not necessarily a goal," Nieuwenhuis said in conversation with Wielerflits. "From my first cross, the Dutch championship, I tried to go into the last weeks of the cross-winter uninhibited. My mentality was: it could be good, but it could also be disappointing. And should that have been the case, that was okay too. You can see that when I'm on the bike. I just wanted to become as good as possible again, and what result comes with that, we'll see. If fifth would have been the highest possible result, that would also have been okay. But I'm super satisfied with how things are going at the moment."

It seems as if with that, the pressure has fallen off his shoulders. "A little bit yes, but mostly I was relieved that we had made the right choices in the past few months. That we had waited to come back after all. And that we would first try to fully rebuild, train well and only then get back into competition. I'm very happy that my team had that confidence and gave me that space."

So might Nieuwenhuis have been able to cross country before this winter anyway? "No, I can deny that. Earlier really wouldn't have been possible. My last few weeks were very intense. I felt two weeks before the NK that I really wasn't good enough yet. I discussed that well with my mental coach, my trainer and team leader Richard Groenendaal. In the last few weeks things have really improved in big steps. That also means that with big steps it can fall back again. But that doesn't matter now, because I only have a few races left."

"From now on, I will mainly look forward and not back. I don't want to see the past period as a wasted season. In the end I also learned a lot, no matter how unpleasant it was. But it's no different," the Dutch rider from Ridley Racing Team concluded. "I will have to get over that. Also, what's in it for me if I don't? Then next year will just be the season of confirmation."

For Nieuwenhuis, there is now one more important race on the schedule: the World Cyclocross Championship. Last year he still managed to finish second behind Mathieu van der Poel. Does he have any particular goals for this year? "The highest achievable is the podium. I'll just go for that on Sunday. I'm going into the World Championship the way I went into the last few weeks. Uninhibited, and then we'll see what comes out of that."

However, his winter is not definitely over after the World Championship. "We haven't quite finalized the planning for the end of the season yet, but of course I still want to try to ride as much as possible. Basically there is not that much missing from my form anymore. I still need a bigger base of course, but that will hopefully come again next season," he concludes.