'I know I will suffer immensely' - Tim Merlier confirms long-awaited return after injury-plagued start to season

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

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 was due to take part at Nokere Koerse and Bredene Koksijde this week. But then he had to pull out.

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

"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.

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.

His race in Montseré, 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.

"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.

“It is typical of me to want to prove that it is possible with less training, but it is against my better judgment."

Merlier opted for the GP Jean-Pierre Monseré 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.

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.

Other options are being categorically rejected, he said.

"Gent-Wevelgem next week? With this condition level, surely you can’t expect me to ride a 250 km race,” he asked rhetorically.

"Of course, that is somewhere in the back of my mind, but I have to be realistic: that’s not going to happen.

“Wevelgem and Paris-Roubaix are out of the question. I also don’t 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."

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