After an illness- and crash-disrupted preparation, Thibau Nys (Lidl-Trek) is starting his highly anticipated Tour de France debut with slightly knocked confidence.
Nys, 22, has had mixed fortunes in the weeks leading up to the Grand Départ, first suffering a training crash and then being forced out of his final preparation race due to illness, causing him to become notably more apprehensive.
Speaking at Lidl-Trek's pre-Tour press conference at their hotel near Lille airport, Nys was careful to be as bullish internally as some commentators are rating him for his maiden appearance, mainly due to the unknowns that the Tour's chaos breeds.
"I'm doing OK, I'm excited. I'm not as confident as I hoped to be at this moment two days before the Tour, but we'll try to make it work," Nys told reporters on Thursday morning.
"It's been quite a difficult period, with a hard crash in an altitude camp. Then I started to feel better again, but then I got sick in the Tour of Belgium, which was mentally not ideal, because I really wanted to find the confidence. But we did everything in our power to be ready."
His team were more bullish as they spoke about the multi-discipline star's chances on the road, stating that if he wasn't up to the challenges presented by cycling's biggest race, then he wouldn't be here.
"The preparation was not a hundred per cent perfect, but we still believe he belongs here. It's his first Grand Tour, and he's not here to learn, he's here to deliver," said sports director Greg Rast to Cyclingnews outside the team bus.
"We still think he can manage really well, but of course, there is a really big competition, as the stages that suit him, also suit Pogačar and even Vingegaard can go really fast too on these shorter climbs. But only the best are here, and he's one of them."
For Nys, it was more a question of not knowing how he stacks up against the rivals he'll be up against in pursuit of a first Tour stage win, than actually being in bad form. The answers should become clear in the first 10 days, many of which he'll be an outside favourite for.
"It will be a crazy, hectic and nervous first week. There's not going to be a lot of time to sit back and relax, and it's going to be a kind of stress in the bunch that I never experienced before," said Nys.
"To try to be ready for that, just being really sharp, mentally, is going to be important, and then the legs will speak. This is the biggest stage, and I just hope I find the right mental and physical balance and focus which will be needed."
Competing with the very best
The young Belgian is hoping his legs will speak best on either stage 6 to Vire Normandie, or stage 7 to the Mûr de Bretagne, but knows full well that he'll need to reach new heights if he's to compete with the likes of Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) or Mathieu van der Poel (Alpecin-Deceuninck).
"There are a lot of question marks, but I'm OK – I'm going with good form, and I'm feeling great. I trained hard last week, but it is the Tour, and I've never experienced this.
"So I know where I'm standing at this moment, but I don't know how it compares to the level of the Tour, and this is what makes it a bit difficult to predict the results or what I can do. The level of these guys these days is getting a bit scary.
"Everyone I speak with says, 'OK, but in the Tour, it's different, you know?', so I know that I will need to be at a hundred and ten per cent and even higher to try to fight for a stage win."
For now, Nys said just arriving in Paris and surviving 21 days of all-out racing is what he's after, with the pressure at Lidl-Trek mainly on sprinter Jonathan Milan to deliver them a stage win and yellow jersey.
As has been the case throughout his cyclocross career, Nys isn't overly hell-bent on following in the footsteps of Van der Poel and Wout van Aert, but of course would ideally like to race alongside them in competition for a stage win.
"I would love to [to go head-to-head with them], it would mean that I'm in a really good shape and that I will be close to winning stage… or at least third," said Nys with a smile.
It could become a Tour debut for the ages should Nys live up to the hype that has built around him in and outside of Belgium in his rapid rise to the sport's upper echelons, but the advice from his peers and mentors is keeping him grounded.
"Just to expect the worst," is what Nys described as the advice he'd been given. "It will not be a walk in the park, and I know that, but I try to enjoy it, and I try to learn from this.
"I'm just curious to to know how my body will feel after three weeks of non-stop racing. There's a lot of question marks and a lot of blind spots for the moment, so I'll just let it happen and see how it goes and how I will react on.
Despite wearing green Tom Boonen jerseys growing up and being on the roadside during Chris Froome's iconic Mont Ventoux run, cycling was never a means to Nys reaching any ultimate goal of the Tour. He was still just supposed to be a cyclo-crosser, but his talent has prevented him from doing as such.
"I never really thought about doing it myself, because I always wanted to be a cyclo-cross rider," Nys said. "I already from a really young age knew that this was the biggest scene, but I never saw myself doing this, like it was not really a goal or something. So it all went fast from that point, and now we're here."
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