Heartland Cyclocross: The legend of Sven

For the Flandrian faithful, Sven Nys will forever be the physical embodiment of cyclocross. He raced against, and beat, three generations of riders in a career that defined what it means to be a true ’cross specialist. His breakthrough first World Cup win occurred in 1998 at the demanding power circuit in Tábor, Czech Republic; his last World Cup victory happened in the heavy sands of the Duinencross in 2015 at Koksijde, Belgium. Two very different courses with seventeen years—and 48 additional World Cup victories—between them.

Perhaps Nys’s most memorable race, however, was one he didn’t win. His duel with then two-time world Champion Zdenek Stybar—his greatest rival—at Hoogerheide in the Netherlands at the 2014 World Championships is remembered as one of the finest races of its time. 

The two riders shadowed one other from the gun, testing each other again and again, but also keenly maintaining the pace and pressure at the head of the race, lest more of the heavy-hitting Belgian squad find its way back to the front. Whether Stybar or Nys was more wary of the other Belgians remains an open question.

Hoogerheide is known for its stairs and relentless technical features, a course frequently filled with heavy mud and changeable race lines. Thirty minutes into the race it was just the two of them, Nys and Stybar, with a young Lars Van Der Haar chasing hard behind. Nys went, Stybar clawed back. Nys went again, then bobbled, allowing Stybar room to come through and attack, only to catastrophically lose his front wheel and go down on a sweeping right hand corner. Deftly leaping over his fallen rival, Nys attacked with everything he had, knowing this was his opportunity to escape the Czech rider’s superior sprint. 

For the first time, there was daylight between the two men, and it looked, briefly, like Nys might have enough in the tank to maintain his gap to the finish, but half a lap later Stybar appeared over his right shoulder at the top of a run-up, implacable, his eyes shrouded behind dark glasses. The muddied rivals crossed the line together for the bell lap, the rest of the field strung out behind. 

Nys first let Stybar lead in what looked like a tactical decision, then, as Stybar began to ratchet up the pace, corner by corner Nys began to come undone, pressured first into one mistake, then another. Nys’s legendary poise crumbled against sheer power as Stybar’s bike whipsawed beneath him from one side of the tape to the other. He drove forward unabated, undoubtedly the strongest man on the day it mattered. Stybar’s win marked his third world title, earning him one more, forever, than the man he narrowly beat. 

Twelve seconds separated the two men at the finish line, the largest gap between them over the entire race. Stybar would come back to cyclocross again years later, at the very end of his career, when he no longer could set the pace at the front, but this was his last great triumph. The lure of the Spring Classics drew him to the road, where he found a role as a staunch lieutenant on the all-powerful Quick-Step squad that defined the era. For Nys, 2014 Worlds was a bitter disappointment, his last chance at a title before Mathieu Van Der Poel came to rule the proverbial roost.

In Nys’s final season, he came to the US to race the first ever World Cup held outside of Europe, in Las Vegas, Nevada. He knew, instinctively, his role as elder statesman to help usher in a new, more global era of cyclocross outside of the heartland. Cyclocross would be in good hands going forward: CrossVegas was won that year by none other than Wout van Aert. After retiring from racing, Nys took over the venerable Telenet-Fidea squad, as well as helping his son Thibau progress through the junior ranks to become a World Cup-winning professional in his own right.

Addendum: Nys came stateside once more in 2016, to compete in the Singlespeed Cyclocross World Championships (SSCXWX) in Portland, Oregon, surprising everyone except his Trek team after registering under a pseudonym. Under almost Belgian skies, he bent the deep rutted mud of Sauvie Island to his will, effortlessly riding around the course in a good-natured duel with American rider Adam Craig, before allowing Craig to take the win, and with it the mandatory winner’s tattoo. On screen, Nys’s riding is impressive. In person, he is magnetic, moving with grace and speed that seem to defy physics—he floats above, alone, forever mud-spattered, forever Sven.

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