Tim Wellens is renowned for shining in the rain and struggling when the mercury takes off. The Limburgian nevertheless became Belgian champion in the middle of a cagnard. Explanations.
In the professional peloton, Some called him “Rain man”. The love story between Tim Wellens and rainy days had even become a Gimmik of social networks. It is not a coincidence if on the 40 bouquets collected in ten years of career, A quarter was collected in February.
In 2017, Tim Wellens even left the Route du Tour de France, Matraqué by a heat allergy Discovered during the Tour of Switzerland, a few weeks earlier, when the blazing sun had covered its legs with strange red plates. Already far from being a lover of the combination between the saddle and the sun, the Limburg even dismisses the warm race for the yellow jersey of its program the following year. Wellens thought he had put all the chances on his sidebetween a move to Monaco in the summer of 2016 and a few sauna sessions programmed during the winter.
Is it the same man who, on June 29, 2025, when the sun crushed the national peloton, flies away alone 42 kilometers from the finish line in Binche? A few minutes after raising your arms in the city of Gille, it’s even with a long sleeve jersey that he presents on the podium To receive his jersey of Belgian champion.
The contrast surprises, the identity of the employer questions. While at Lotto, his previous team, we had sought remedies everywhere for this evil, the UAE Emirates team seems to have found the heat vaccine that overwhelmed Tim Wellens so much. Sulfurous because of the extraordinary performances of Tadej Pogacar and the past of Dopé of its sports director Mauro Gianetti, the Emirati training carries many fantasies. Difficult, however, to imagine a story of doping involving Tim Wellens, he who had preferred to abandon the 2017 Tour de France rather than using an authorization for therapeutic use (Editor’s note: in the peloton, the “auts” are delivered to exceptionally allow a sick runner or injured to use a drug containing doses of prohibited products).
“This winter, I rolled a lot on Home-Trainer, putting a jacket to get used to the heat,” explains Wellens in the media gathered in the tent where interviews take place after arrival. Intensive sessions on the rollers, controlled using a thermometer which checks the effects of the effort on body temperature, and which have obviously helped the new Belgian champion to better tolerate the intensity of the effort coupled upwards degrees. Not a pleasure, to believe the explanations given by the person concerned on the set of Sporzatricolor jersey on the shoulders: “It feels like stifling on the rolls. It is a training that I would not recommend to my worst enemy. ”
In 2022, while the heat wave accompanied the Tour caravan, Tadej Pogacar had seemed to crack when the mercury had gone awaylosing foot in his duel with the Danish Jonas Vingegaard. The previous year, it was also under a blazing sun that he had let glimpse of first signs of weakness on the slopes of a Mont Ventoux where the absence of vegetation increases the feeling of suffocation. Since then, Slovenian seems to have been accommodated there.
Obviously, “Rain Man” followed the example of its leader.
