{"id":486618,"date":"2026-03-20T23:04:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/486618\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T23:04:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T23:04:13","slug":"i-know-i-will-suffer-immensely-tim-merlier-confirms-long-awaited-return-after-injury-plagued-start-to-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/486618\/","title":{"rendered":"‘I know I will suffer immensely’ – Tim Merlier confirms long-awaited return after injury-plagued start to season"},"content":{"rendered":"

After months of recovery from a knee injury<\/a>, one of Belgium’s top sprint stars is back racing this Sunday in the Grote Prijs Jean-Pierre Monser\u00e9 in West Flanders, but is warning that he is not at all certain of what his race form will be like.<\/p>\n

Dogged by a knee injury that has kept him in the sick bay at a time when he usually races up multiple successes – last year by this point he already has six wins – 33-year-old Tim Merlier<\/a> was due to take part at Nokere Koerse and Bredene Koksijde<\/a> this week. But then he had to pull out.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Finally, due to take part in a race on home soil this Sunday in Roeselare, which he won in 2021<\/a>, five years on, Merlier says he has no idea how he will perform. The only twin certainties, he told Het Laatste Nieuws<\/a> in a brutally revealing interview, are that he wants to be back racing, but that he knows it will hurt.<\/p>\n

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“I want to finish the race and try to place myself in the final, but really breaking away in the sprint seems inconceivable. I see the race as a test and want to have some fun, although I know I will suffer immensely,” Merlier said.<\/p>\n

Merlier has been training for four weeks, he told the newspaper. However, after having to fly home early from three training camps due to the injury, it was only during a fourth camp in Spain last week that he was able to cycle for five hours continuously. “That hadn’t happened since September 6 last year,” he told HLN.<\/a><\/p>\n

His race in Montser\u00e9, dedicated to the Belgian World Champion of the early 1970s who died tragically young, will thus be a real challenge, but he’s ready to face it.<\/p>\n

“My nerves are jangling, and I lie awake at night wondering if I will be able to keep up. There is even a bit of fear of failure. I am struggling with a lack of fitness. Right now, I am an experiment,” he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt is typical of me to want to prove that it is possible with less training, but it is against my better judgment.”<\/p>\n

Merlier opted for the GP Jean-Pierre Monser\u00e9 because it was the least demanding of the available options, rather than risk a more challenging start in other Classics or next week’s hilly Coppi e Bartali stage race in Italy.<\/p>\n

His race program afterwards remains something that will only be decided as he goes along, at least until the second half of April. A training camp is possible, given he’ll almost certainly have extra fitness work to do, but all being well, he already has the Scheldeprijs pencilled in.<\/p>\n

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Other options are being categorically rejected, he said.<\/p>\n

“Gent-Wevelgem next week? With this condition level, surely you can\u2019t expect me to ride a 250 km race,\u201d he asked rhetorically.<\/p>\n

“Of course, that is somewhere in the back of my mind, but I have to be realistic: that\u2019s not going to happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cWevelgem and Paris-Roubaix are out of the question. I also don\u2019t want to put the rest of my season at risk. The most important thing will be to make it to the Belgian Championships and the Tour.”<\/p>\n

Get unlimited access to our unrivalled 2026 Spring Classics<\/a> coverage with a Cyclingnews subscription. We’ll bring you breaking news, reports, and analysis from some of the biggest races on the calendar, including Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Flanders. Find out more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After months of recovery from a knee injury, one of Belgium’s top sprint stars is back racing this…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486619,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-486618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486618"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486618\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486619"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}