Thibau Nys will start his cyclocross winter on the Koppenberg. The Belgian champion will line up at the Koppenbergcross in Oudenaarde on Sunday 1 November 2026, the opening race of the X2O Badkamers Trofee.
Nys rode the Vuelta and the road World Championships this year, but missed a large part of his road season because of knee problems and later toxoplasmosis. After the Worlds he took ten days off, among other things in Japan, and only since then is his head fully back in the cyclocross.
Father Sven Nys does not expect a perfect opening race: "Are you at 110% on the Koppenberg? Maybe not. But he will still grow." He does stress that his son has finally found mental peace and is not starting from zero physically after a heavy Vuelta and the World Championships.
Michael Vanthourenhout, who won the first classifications race of the season in Overijse on Saturday, calls the Koppenberg "my black beast". "It will be very hard to beat him on the Koppenberg, but we will do our best", he stays modest about Nys.
Team manager Thomas Sneyers of Crelan-Corendon expects Nys to contend for prizes from the very first race, but calls it no "walk in the park": "The level in the cyclocross is very high." National coach Angelo De Clercq no longer believes in a poor preparation: "Thibau will be right there straight away."
The Koppenberg does suit Nys: last season he dominated there and won. According to De Clercq, the climbing effort of more than a minute makes this race unrepresentative of the rest of the winter, so the balance can still shift in the other cyclocross races.
The programme for Sunday 1 November has the women starting at 13:45 and the men at 15:00, local times in Belgium; the race is broadcast live on sporza/VRT and Eurosport. Want to read the full article? Click the button below for the report on Wielerflits.