The groups that I was in and out of (in Nommay), some of those guys won’t be there this weekend and some will. “I would probably need a perfect day to have a top-15 result. “I feel actually okay (about worlds),” he told VeloNews. Johnson, meanwhile, said he felt positive, but thought breaking into the top 15 would require an ideal race. “This is where I want to be, you know? This is what I want to do, and so if you’re here and you’re doing it, everything’s great.” I’m trying to be good right now last year I look at as kind of a missed opportunity, so this year I feel like I did the things I could do that were in my control, and I’m looking forward to (worlds),” said Powers. Powers, who posted the best result of the American men in Nommay with 15th, told VeloNews he felt that he has improved at racing in the heavy conditions likely in Hoogerheide, and was confident heading into his first post-Louisville 2013 world championships. Six American men will also be in the hunt for a good result on Sunday: veterans Jonathan Page, Tim Johnson, and Ryan Trebon, national champion Jeremy Powers, first-year elite rider Zach McDonald, and worlds rookie Allen Krughoff. The Czech, who lives most of the year in Essen, Belgium, barely 10 kilometers over the border from Hoogerheide, told reporters he would decide late this week whether he will race. Walsleben, too, won a world title in Hoogerheide in 2009, when he was still an under-23 rider.Īnd Stybar, with a growing list of achievements in his burgeoning road career, has left his world championship start an open question. Albert, who won the first of his two elite world titles in that 2009 championship race, has had a rocky season, and told reporters this week that he has not been able to determine the reason for his inconsistency or find a formula to overcome it.Īlbert’s BKCP-Powerplus teammate Walsleben, meanwhile, has scored few major wins, but has been a frequent visitor to the podium this season. Van der Haar, who clinched the World Cup overall on Sunday, is on the best form of his young career, but will have to deal with enormous pressure to produce a result in the first Dutch-hosted world championships since 2009, when Hoogerheide last hosted worlds. After 10 days my condition and my body are exactly as I’d have dreamed of them.”Īfter a brilliant Christmas season and January campaign, Nys will arrive in Hoogerheide this weekend as the unquestioned man to beat in a field that also includes the Dutch champion and home favorite Lars van der Haar, six Belgian teammates led by two-time world champion Niels Albert, German champion Philipp Walsleben, and - possibly - Czech two-time world champion Zdenek Stybar. And it’s exactly why I wanted to prepare for the world championships here. Total returns is the key, both physically and mentally. If you’re a little older like I am, you have to push much harder on the flats to achieve the same result. No mountains, but little climbs where you can work for 15 or 20 minutes. “I can do as much hill training as I want here and in much better weather.
“ was a tremendous value,” Nys told Belgian daily Gazet van Antwerpen just before returning to Belgium on Wednesday. The World Cup overall out of reach, he opted to prepare to defend his rainbow stripes with a final training block on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. Nys, with six wins in his last seven starts including a ninth Belgian national title, is on impressive form after an inconsistent early season. In the elite men’s race it was the reigning world champion, Sven Nys of Belgium, who opted not to start at all. In the women’s race it was Katie Compton, the 10-time American national champion on perhaps the best form of her career, who walked off the course in the middle of her race’s second lap, dropped her bike, and sat down on the ground, gasping, victim of an allergy-induced asthma attack. Not the hundreds of riders who crossed the finish line, but rather two who did not.
BRUSSELS (VN) - Anyone who scanned the results sheets at last week’s UCI Cyclocross World Cup finale in Nommay, France, looking for insight into the four world championship races that will unfold in Hoogerheide, Netherlands, this weekend, could not have failed to notice them.
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