But let’s compare their achievements. Van der Poel had just turned 20 when he won the first of his six cyclo-cross world championships, 15 seconds ahead of the 21-year-old van Aert; van Aert was 22 when he won the first of his three cyclo-cross world titles; and Evenepoel was only 19 when he won his first major-one day race, the 2019 Clásica de San Sebastián, and only 22 when he won the World Road Race Championship in 2022, the year he was awarded the Vélo d’Or as that year’s best male rider.
That’s an elevated company for a young rider who has won just one major Elite Men’s cyclo-cross race and counts only 11 professional road race victories, the most prestigious of which is probably this year’s Tour of Hungary, in which he won both the yellow and green jerseys.
But anyone who has seen him ride knows that he has everything a rider needs to become a cut or two above almost all the rest: strength, stamina, a ferocious will to win and impressive riding intelligence. And no wonder, for his father and coach is Sven Nys, considered by many the greatest cyclo-cross rider of all time. Nys the elder won his first Cyclo-cross World Championship at the age of 28 and the second, and last, at 36, so he knows that there is no need to rush success.
But it’s only natural to wonder how Nys the younger would fare if he lined up in the 2025 Cyclo-cross World Championships against van der Poel and/or van Aert. The latter is coming off a year marked by two bad crashes, the last of which at the Vuelta a España, so one must wonder if, at 30, his bike-handling skills have deteriorated or if the amount of time he spends on road racing is detrimental to his cyclo-cross performances.
But van der Poel still looks like his usual dominant self as he won three spring Classics this year – the E3 Saxo Classic, the Tour of Flanders and Paris-Roubaix – as well as the Gravel World Championship. It’s unclear if he will ride cyclo-cross this season. He made his last statement on that eventuality a month ago when he told Wielerflits, “We still have to decide whether or not I will ride cyclo-cross this winter. I am going on holiday first, then we will see.”
As for van Aert, he may return to the cyclo-cross circuit just before Christmas, Visma–Lease a Bike coach Jan Boven recently told Wielerflits. “Wout is now leaving for Spain for two and a half weeks to train,” he said. “After that, we will sit down together but he will only start again after the first team training camp that ends on December 19.”
If both stars do show up in their best form this winter, it will give those of us who regard Nys as the Next Big Thing in cycling a chance to watch him take on the very best in the discipline. Comparisons in sports are always difficult, especially if the conditions differ. As Sven Nys has pointed out: “At the age of 21, Mathieu van der Poel and Wout van Aert let cyclo-cross take precedence and rode at most 10 or 15 races on the road. Thibau this year, 34! After which he will add another 22 cyclo-cross races. So there is very little margin for errors.”
That is the choice all multi-discipline riders have to make: how to balance the different disciplines to achieve maximum success. This is a difficult balance to achieve. Van der Poel who rides the big one-day races in the spring, the Tour de France and the UCI Road World Championships, has found a balance that works for him. However, the more van Aert committed himself to road racing and Visma teammate Jonas Vingegaard’s quest for the Tour de France yellow jersey, the less success he found in cyclo-cross: he won his last Cyclo-cross World Championship in 2018 and the last overall World Cup title in the 2020-21 season.
It will be interesting to see how well Nys manages that balance in the future. It will also be interesting to see where his interests lie in road racing. Will he eventually tackle the spring Classics and race against Evenepoel, van der Poel, and (why not?) Tadej Pogačar in, for example, the Tour of Flanders? Will he have the stamina to ride with them for 60 km over cobblestones and hills?
However, in his brief road race career, Nys has not shown a particular fondness for one-day races. Most of his road wins have come in stage races – though last year, he did win the Grosser Preis des Kantons Aargau in a bunch sprint ahead of Marc Hirschi and Pello Bilbao.
So it’s much too soon to tell just what his (and his father’s) plans are for his career. Interestingly, one of his two stage wins in this year’s Tour of Hungary had a difficult summit finish (12.1 km @ 5,6%, with the final 3.4 km averaging 8%!). The stage included another, lesser climb of 8.6 km @ 4.7%. In that stage, Nys beat some decent climbers, such as Emanuel Buchmann, Diego Ulissi, Wout Poels, and Óscar Rodríguez. So is a Tour de France in his future?
We won’t know until it happens – or not. In the meantime, we can watch the growth and development of a superb young cyclist who is on the verge of a wonderful career that, as of now at least, seems to have no limits.
