Thibau Nys questions Olympic rush as cyclocross weighs its future

“It feels so forced,” Nys said, reacting to Sporza what he sees as a deliberate shove toward the Olympic programme.

That word, forced, is doing a lot of work. Because Nys is not arguing that cyclocross lacks value. He is arguing that it already has value, and that chasing an Olympic badge might not add anything meaningful.

“I do not know if I am a fan of it, and I do not know if our sport will become better because of it,” he said. “We are very big in Belgium and it has worked perfectly this way for years.”

It is an interesting honest position for a rider who, on paper, should be a natural supporter. Nys is improving fast in the cross. He is becoming part of the furniture at the front end of big races. If the sport would land on the 2030 Winter Olympics programme, it is his generation that would inherit the spotlight.

Yet he sounds unconvinced that the sport should be building its future around that spotlight at all.

“I think we should look closer to home at where things are going wrong,” Nys said, “and try to make the sport bigger that way, instead of forcing it onto the Games.”

That hesitation stands out precisely because others at the very top have gone the other way. Mathieu van der Poel, Tadej Pogačar and Puck Pieterse have backed the UCI push. "We asked them to make a video, which we could send to the organising committee of the 2030 Winter Games and also to the IOC," UCI Sports Director, Peter Van Den Abeele revealed in November.

The process of getting cyclocross onto the Olympic programme has not been straightforward. After the UCI announced its ambition in November, the Winter Olympic Federations, which represents the governing bodies of sports such as skiing, biathlon and bobsled, signalled its opposition to adding disciplines that are not contested specifically on snow or ice.

As things stand, the final call is still with the IOC. While the timeline originally pointed toward clearer signals around February, the process has been extended, with the IOC now expected to reach its conclusion this summer after what have been described as constructive and positive discussions with the UCI.