Nathan Van Hooydonck’s retirement is that of a total gregarious
We feel the scares among cyclists as our own, I don’t know, it’s like a kind of fatherhood, of being an amateur with respect to their idol or I don’t know what, that when news like that of Nathan Van Hooydonck comes out it clouds the day in a strange way, the Career takes a backseat and we fall into the idea that those we see on television are people.
The news of the rider’s heart attack, driving and with his pregnant partner as co-driver, came in the middle of the Vuelta, the day of Vingegaard’s second stage victory, who pointed him out as one of his best friends.
Then, the succession of information that ended a couple of days ago with the announcement of Nathan Van Hooydonck’s retirement from cycling.
Cardiac mishaps, if you allow me to call them that, have always existed in cycling, they are like a Malayan drop that reproduces itself from time to timefeeding theories, because I have not seen any realities, of all kinds about whether or not there is doping, cheating or similar.
I am not going to go into something that I have no idea about, no matter how much I can think about how this could happen to athletes of the highest level and monitored to the core.
In any case, Nathan Van Hooydonck’s retirement makes me especially sad.
Whenever I have seen him in the race or read somewhere, I remember his uncle, Edwig Van Hooydonka six-foot-tall hound that De Ronde won with that blue Buckler jersey, a team that I loved because there were those Belgian and Dutch riders capable of bursting the peloton two from the finish line and leaving no victims along the way.
It was the team of Maasen, Nidjam and the aforementioned Van Hooydonck, among others.
Nathan inherited his uncle’s rolling powerbut it went a little further.
He stood out quickly in classics, being one of the few companions that Van Aert had left in the decisive stages in that first Jumbo from four years ago, when the team was aiming for what it is today, but it was still far away.
But it didn’t stop there, if US Postal and Team Sky taught one thing it is make great gregarious people of excellent rollersand just as happened with riders like Hincapie, Boasson Hagen or Dylan Van Baarle, Jumbo began to broaden the scope of his team of riders towards key tasks in the grand tours.
And there they entered Tiesj Benoot, Christophe Laporte and propio Van Hooydonckwho pulled the cart in the flat stages of the Tour as they started the selections in the big ports.
That versatility of records, that versatility, was able to be carried out by Nathan, who now feels lucky to be still alive.
He is 27 years old and has his whole life ahead of him, I hope he has amassed enough to start again, I don’t know if in cycling or outside of it, but to start the life that he surely deserves, because the radical change that has fallen upon him is something that It shouldn’t be easy to manage.
Image: ASO/Pauline Ballet
2023-09-21 11:18:29
#Nathan #Van #Hooydoncks #retirement #total #gregarious
