Kevin Pauwels ‘knee is definitely a factor’ in his tumbling performance, Coach Marc Herremans
After a struggling Superprestige series, the things are not looking pretty good for Kevin Pauwels, revealing that the main reason behind his dipping performance is an injury sustained at Zonhoven.
Niels Albert of Team BKCP-Powerplus and Sven Nys of Team Landbouwkrediet-Euphony dominated throughout the Superprestige series but Pauwels who belong to the same pack, could not even secure a podium spot.
Sven Nys took a little over an hour to finish the race with Niels Albert finishing 18 minutes behind at the second position.
Lars van der Haar of Team Rabobank and Bart Aernouts of Team AA Drink Cyclocross occupied the third and the fourth positions and Kevin Pauwels of Team Sunweb-Revor finished over 35 seconds behind Nys at the fifth position.
However, it has been disclosed that Pauwels’ poor performance at the Superprestige Hamme-Zogge was mainly because of the knee injury he sustained at the race.
The information was revealed by the cyclist’s coach Marc Herremans as reported by Nieuwsblad, "Kevin has a whole week bothered by a sore knee, but he kept it secret because he did not want to use it as an excuse".
"Kevin has not talked about it himself because he was scared to make excuses".
"But his knee is definitely a factor. He bumped his knee against the stem in Zonhoven and had a whole week without quality training.
"He knows that he is doing well in training and the form can quickly turn. I gave him the example of Philippe Gilbert, who had a bad year but in the end was world champion."
The 28-year-old started the 2012 Cyclo-cross World Cup season with a first place finish at Tabor and still leads the UCI standings as of October 30th, 2012.
He has claimed a total number of 2303 points to occupy the top podium position, overcoming his compatriots and rivals Sven Nys of Team Landbouwkrediet-KDL and Niels Albert of Team BKCP-Powerplus
Nys fell 233 points short at the second spot while Albert secured the third position with 1816 points to his credit.
Zdenek Stybar of Team Omega Pharma-Quick Step (1590) and Tom Meeusen of Team Telenet-Fidea (1505) secured the fourth and the fifth positions in the respective order.
Despite the injury, Herremans is positive that Pauwels will recover in time to overcome the in-form Sven Nys and Niels Albert.
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