Thibau Nys won the Koppenbergcross, his first race back, in a sprint on the Koppenberg cobbles ahead of Michael Vanthourenhout, seven seconds behind. Third win at the Koppenberg. Afterwards he told DH this: “So I’m really happy with my form. But I can’t be happy from a technical point of view. The perfectionist in me can’t be! I need to improve in that area.”
He wins, and he’s not happy with the technique. I know that customer. He comes back to the shop on Monday with a bike that works and says there’s something wrong. You find nothing. He insists. And one day you find it: a cable rubbing in its housing. You don’t see it, you hear it.
Technique, where I work, is three things you adjust. Pressure first, to the tenth of a bar, because on wet cobbles it decides whether the tyre bites or argues. Then the headset. And the mud, which you take off before it dries, mind you, or you’re changing gear with a brick.
I’m not saying that’s what it is with him. I don’t have his bike in front of me. I’m saying that “perfectionist”, in my workshop, means one thing: someone who comes back. And I like the ones who come back.
It’s been pouring on Mouscron since this morning. I got the hose out. I’ll lower the pressure on the club’s cross bikes, then, by a tenth. Nobody asks for it. I do.
It’s true, we checked: Sporza.
