Belgian classics star looks back at two unsuccessful years at the Dutch team
Nick Nuyens will be leaving the Rabobank team at the end of the year, having spent two years at the orange, white and blue team. Things have not gone as planned for the Belgian however, with his only victories being a third GP de Wallonie, in 2009, and a stage of this year’s Österreich-Rundfahrt.
He has yet to confirm his destination for 2011; Saxo Bank-SunGard is the most likely team, but he has declared an interest in a return to Quick Step, his first ever team. He was not offered an extension to his contract with Rabobank, nor did he look for one, as things have simply not worked out between them.
“I’m sorry that I’m leaving,” he said in an interview with Dutch magazine Wieler Revue this week. “I guess that I just don’t fit in with the team and the team doesn’t fit in with me.”
After a successful time at Quick Step, with victories in races like Paris-Brussels, Omloop Het Volk (now called Het Nieuwsblad) and Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne, he headed for French team Cofidis so that he could be the team leader. His results, while not quite so good, continued with the overall Etoile de Besseges and a stage of the Eneco Tour in 2007; his second place at the 2008 Ronde van Vlaanderen was the standout result of his time at the French team though, which he hoped to build upon with his transfer to Rabobank.
While things have not gone well, with just those two victories and very little from the spring classics to show for his two years, he refuses to go so far as to say that he regretted signing for the Dutch team.
“That’s too strong a word,” he said, “such is life, eh? Love at first sight doesn’t always work out; I’ve worked together well with certain people [in the team], with others less so.”
“I don’t want to point any fingers or anything,” he added, “Rabobank and I did not fit together, that’s the end of it; that’s life.”
Exactly what went wrong, or rather didn’t go right, between Nuyens and Rabobank is not easy to define; but the failure to gel with the team properly affected the way the team performed at the end of races.
“I don’t know, it’s hard to say,” he said. “If you have a number of riders at the finish [of a race], you should be able to work together as a team. Maybe we lacked a little bit to go through the fire for each other; that doesn’t apply to everyone, but this way it nevertheless becomes more difficult.”
“To go through the fire is to show that ’I’m kaput, but I’ll still ride on the front for another 500 metres’,” he explained. “This is just one piece of the whole, as a result of which the puzzle could not fall together.”
While the two years will not rank as a successful period for Nuyens and Rabobank, it was not an entirely negative experience. Certain things at Rabobank were done very well, according to Nuyens.
“In terms of organisation it really is the best for the both the riders and the staff,” he said, “for example, the way that the course reconnaissances were arranged was perfect.”
Nuyens new team was expected to be announced during the Vuelta a España, but no official word has been released. While he declared early in the race that he was almost certain to be heading to Saxo Bank-Sungard, the uncertainty around Alberto Contador’s positive test for clenbuterol may be causing him to delay any decision.