The talent of Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) has been identified for years now but the young Belgian doesn’t stop impressing as he racks up successes this year on the road, adding to his feats during the cyclo-cross season. The 21-year-old star in the making has increased his tally to nine victories in 2024, five of them in UCI WorldTour races, after he took three stage wins last week in the Tour de Pologne.
“That is really incredibly impressive,” Koen de Kort assures Koen de Kort, team support manager for Lidl-Trek. “We knew that he was a very talented rider coming into the peloton. He already showed that in other disciplines, especially cyclo-cross of course. But that he would be able to develop so quickly is obviously a surprise for everyone.”
Nys himself appeared incredulous on Saturday, when he powered to victory for the third time in just five days, on the demanding slopes leading to Bukovina Resort.
“Honestly I must say a big apology to all the riders I told I was not feeling great today but, believe me, I was speaking the truth this morning,” the Belgian puncheur said after he got the better of Diego Ulissi (UAE Team Emirates), Oscar Onley (Team dsm-firmenich PostNL) and Jonas Vingegaard (Team Visma | Lease a Bike), fourth on the day and the overall winner of the Tour de Pologne.
“I was really not on my top level today,” Nys added. “I felt like I was not able to push myself over the limit. In the end, if I was able to be there playing for the win, it was also a kind of luck, the sort you only get if you always believe in it.”
“Skilled technically” and “driven”
Following the tracks of his father Sven Nys (among the most decorated cyclo-cross riders ever with two Elite titles at the UCI World Championships and countless successes in the UCI Cyclo-cross World Cup) as well as those of multidisciplinary talents such as Mathieu Van der Poel and Wout van Aert, Thibau Nys got his first taste of racing through BMX Racing and quickly impressed in cyclo-cross.
Most notably, he was UCI Cyclo-cross World Champion both as a Junior (2020) and Under 23 (2023), and he won his first Elite UCI World Cup round at the beginning of last season.
On the road, he was crowned Under 23 European Champion in 2021, claimed his first professional win in May 2023 (stage 2 of the Tour of Norway) and took his first UCI WorldTour successes this year in the Tour de Romandie (stage 2) and the Tour de Suisse (stage 3).
“Technically, he’s a very skilled rider and that comes, of course, from his background, but he’s also very driven,” De Kort observes. “He knows what he wants. He will do anything to get there and I think he has the qualities to be a star if he’s not already one right now.”
The coming Bretagne Classic - Ouest-France (25 August) will give Nys another opportunity to consolidate his rising status as his abilities seem perfectly suited to the classics.
And with the way he racks up wins in the stage races he participates in, Grand Tours will soon be an exciting horizon. “It’s going to be the logical next step for him,” De Kort anticipates.
“Thibau can win uphill sprints that he contests against the big GC riders because for everybody else it’s too hard so that means that he has a huge engine and still a fast sprint,” De Kort says. “That’s something that comes handy in a Grand Tour, so I’m sure that we will see him be successful there too.”