Thibau Nys explains why he's sporting a platinum blonde look and why we should appreciate Van der Haar’s solo performance

The Dutchman won solo on the Koppenberg. He broke away when everyone else went into the pits, and for a moment, it seemed as though Nys was holding back. Not true, as it turned out. “I didn’t intentionally leave a gap for Lars; everyone was just riding at a pace that was close to the limit. Then Lars suddenly turned it up a notch, and that was too much for me.”

All credit goes to his teammate. “Lars pulled away by fifteen seconds in just two or three minutes—that was beyond anyone’s level today. After that, I just kept riding my own pace. My slower start didn’t necessarily bother me; my pace just wasn’t high enough today. That’s okay—I’m not really disappointed. I would have liked to compete for the win, but it wasn’t in the cards.”

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“For me, it was clearly not as good a feeling as in Overijse, but I still had a decent day. This week, I mainly tried to recover and couldn’t do much else, since the Koppenberg was already on Friday. I tried to regain freshness, and today I felt quite okay, certainly not bad. Others were simply more dominant,” Nys reflects on his form, after his somewhat surprising win in Overijse last Sunday.

“Now I hope to recover well for the European Championship. I wanted to finish as high as possible, but with the European Championship in mind, I also tried to conserve energy as much as I could. The European Championship will be a very different race, and I’m looking forward to it. I hope to feel that spark again,” he concludes. Nys and his teammates will fly to Pontevedra, Spain, on Saturday, where the European Championship will be held on Sunday. With his new hair color, Sven Nys’s son will be easy for fellow passengers to spot. “It’s been the same for a long time, so it was time for something different,” he laughs when asked about his new look.