Thibau Nys ends road season with regrets and gratitude to Lidl-Trek

Last Sunday, Thibau Nys's road cycling season came to an end. The Belgian Lidl-Trek rider will not soon forget his short but powerful 2024 campaign, during which he stood on the top step of the podium nine (!) times in less than four months. The focus now shifts to the cyclo-cross season, Nys announced on social media after his fifth-place finish in the Bretagne Classic, won by Marc Hirschi.

He began his campaign on April 23 in the highly competitive WorldTour race, the Tour of Romandie. It didn’t take long for him to succeed: after just three days, Nys beat fellow breakaway rider Andrea Vendrame in Salvan. A few days later, he completed his first of two WorldTour one-day races at Eschborn-Frankfurt. There, he was in the right group but ended up getting boxed in.

Next, the young rider headed to the Tour of Hungary, where he won two of the more challenging stages, the overall classification and the points classification. The next stop was the Tour of Norway, where he also struck gold right on the first day.

In Switzerland, he experienced mixed fortunes: first, Nys crashed in the GP des Kantons Aargau, but then in the Tour of Switzerland, he defeated several Tour de France riders in Rüschlikon. He concluded the first half of his shortened road season with a fourth place at the Belgian National Championships.

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The second half of his season in late August included the Tour of Poland and the Bretagne Classic. In Poland, he once again showed his mettle with three resounding victories in just seven days. Even Jonas Vingegaard had compliments for the Belgian in the Polish WorldTour race.

Nys made gamble in Brittany at moment when he "perhaps shouldn't have"

The final stop was Brittany, where the Bretagne Classic Quest-France was held on Sunday. Nys finished fifth but hinted afterward that there might have been more potential. "Physically, it was one of my best days of the year, but I gambled at a moment when perhaps I shouldn’t have. That’s how I lost the race," the Belgian said on social media.

For a moment, there was talk that the World Championships in Zurich, Switzerland, could be an option after all his successes, but via Instagram, Nys has already set his sights on his other discipline: the cyclo-cross season. "I want to thank the team for the way they've supported me; it all paid off this season," he added in praise of Lidl-Trek.

This was followed by a "You know who is calling?" to his followers. "Cross is calling," read the next message on social media. It is not yet known when Nys will start his cyclo-cross season.