Although he’s approaching his 37th birthday and had talked about possible retirement earlier this winter, Sven Nys has now declared that he will continue at least two more years in the sport, and could even remain active for three.
Motivated no doubt by the world cyclo-cross championship he won in Louisville in early February, Nys has announced that he will push out the date when he will hang up his wheels, remaining in the sport for at least one year longer than he had previously intended.
Speaking at Oostmalle, he has said that he will now remain active until at least March 2015, and has an option to compete for one additional year beyond that.
“I will race after next year for at least one more season,” he said. “And if that goes well, we have even an option for an extra year.”
The announcement comes months after he told Het Nieuwsblad that he was looking forward to winding things up on February 1st 2014.
“I want a life where I can wake up without immediately thinking, what is the weather like, and what exactly does that mean for my training?” he said in November. “I have to do that 24 hours a day. If my plane is going to land, I check that my knees are certainly not coming into contact with the seat in front of me. It goes that far. I also want to stop when I am still among the best. If everything’s too hard, then maybe I went a year too far.”
However he also admitted that his wife and son wanted him to keep going beyond that point. “When I talk to my son Thibau about quitting, he blinks away a tear. For him it is a party every week, going to the cross, and having a large playground to cycle around.
“If I told him that I was going to race another ten years, he’d jump a hole in the sky. He knows only too well that this time may never come back. There are many people around me who say I could easily go on, but in my head I'm ready to quit.”
Morale boosted by the second rainbow jersey of his career, he now sees things a different way and will push on until 38 or possibly 39 years of age.
Nys has been dominant in the sport, although in recent years he has had tougher times with a younger generation coming through. He nevertheless continued to win big races, and in January turned back the clock to take another world title.