Richard Groenendaal gradually got tired of hearing: “This doesn't make me feel good.”

Eli Iserbyt ended up in the emergency room on New Year's Day due to symptoms of dehydration and was therefore not at his best for the Cyclo-Cross Championships. His colleague Michael Vanthornhout was in even worse condition.

A few days before giving birth, he got the stomach flu again and couldn't eat anything for two days. The European champion hid his illness until just before the start, but eventually won the bronze medal at the European Championships.

Illness as an excuse

But former world champion Richard Groenendaal is a little tired of riders using illness as an excuse. “I'm not happy to hear every time before a game that someone was sick,” he says. Lambert and Albert.

“If you're sick, you're home and you stay home. But when you're on the cross, you're healthy and you don't have to complain about it anymore,” says the former world champion.

“I once called a colleague who was always complaining that he was sick,” Groenendaal says. “Then I said to him, ‘What should people in the hospital think when they see you driving?’”