Career ends after heart failure at 27: The new life of Nathan Van Hooydonck

For a few moments, Nathan Van Hooydonck's life feels like it used to. He talks to Dylan van Baarle and Christophe Laporte and they joke around together at the entrance to the team hotel. Then they walk to the team bus. But while van Baarle and Laporte disappear into the huge yellow vehicle, Van Hooydonck remains in front of it.

He walks to a smaller bus, a black van branded with the Visma | Lease a Bike logo. There he greets a handful of people. Not professional athletes, but partners and sponsors of the team as well as wealthy fans. He himself gets behind the wheel of the van, closes the door and follows his former team-mates.

Nathan Van Hooydonck is still part of Visma | Lease a Bike, but he is no longer part of the professional team. Due to a heart condition, which manifested itself in the most unfavourable way possible in a serious car accident in September 2023the Belgian had to end his career. At the age of 27. Now, like other ex-professionals such as Maarten Tjallingii and Theo Eltink, he is part of the hospitality programme and accompanies the team's guests at the most important races of the year.

Haussler, Vanmarcke, Colbrelli, Sagan - Van Hooydonck is not alone

12 September marked a turning point in Van Hooydonck's life. "The biggest difference between then and now? I've lost a completely structured life that was based on a plan and now I'm faced with absolutely nothing. It's damn hard to come to terms with that." The young Belgian says this calmly and firmly. He seems composed, but lets it be known that this is not and has not always been the case. It is difficult to accept the situation. "But it gets easier every day."

Van Hooydonck is not the only professional who has had to end his career in the last few years due to heart problems. In 2023 alone, with Heinrich Haussler (strong deviations in the annual cardiological examination) and Sep Vanmarcke (arrhythmia and scarring of the heart tissue) involuntarily ended their careers. 2022 broke Sonny Colbrelli collapsed after a sprint finish at the Tour of Catalonia, which he finished in second place. Cardiac arrest. He was later fitted with a defibrillator. The planned comeback was cancelled forever. Peter Sagan, who ended his road career last season but still wants to go to the Olympic Games on his mountain bike, is currently struggling with cardiac arrhythmia. In the meantime, the Slovakian has undergone two heart operations to remove nerve endings that were causing an extremely high heart rate. He returned to light training at the beginning of April.

My right ventricle - or my left? I honestly can't remember exactly - was too big. And that caused trouble.

Van Hooydonck is therefore not alone. But his problems are even more different from the cases mentioned. "My right ventricle - or my left? I honestly can't remember exactly - was too big. And that caused trouble," he says, consciously or unconsciously suppressing the difficulties of the past. The doctors fitted him with a defibrillator. "I see it as a kind of life insurance. If anything goes wrong, it takes over. In a way, it makes life a little easier."

A stroke of fate is followed by baby happiness

Van Hooydonck does not feel restricted by the technical aid. "I can't train like I used to. But I don't want to." He has to give his life a new meaning now, he says combatively. "In a way, I don't like this new life, whatever it looks like in the future. But I have no other choice. I have to make sure that I can lead a happy life. When I get up and open the curtains, I have to do something with my life." It almost sounds a bit like a mantra that he has to keep repeating to himself in order to believe it.

His wife Alicia Cara helps him on his way to a new life. She was in the car with him when her husband suddenly lost consciousness behind the wheel, suffered a cardiac arrest and collided with several vehicles near Antwerp, close to his home village. Miraculously, she remains unharmed. But the miracle is even greater. She is heavily pregnant and gives birth to their son Alessio a week later. The couple had already suffered a miscarriage at the end of 2022.

Van Hooydonck can no longer remember the accident. "It never happened for me." That's why driving, which now makes up a considerable part of his job, is still no problem for him. His wife, on the other hand, still struggles from time to time when she sits in the passenger seat. "But that's normal because she's been through it all," he says.

As normal as it is for him when he is with his old colleagues and is overcome with melancholy. But at the same time, dealing with them is also healing. At least when it is measured. "I never thought I would have to leave cycling at my peak," explains Van Hooydonck. But the 27-year-old was probably not yet at his peak at the time of the accident. He was unable to win a race in his professional career, but had come close in his final season. Only his team-mate Tiesj Benoot beat him in the Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne cobbled classic. He finished eleventh in the Tour of Flanders and E3 Prize.

Emotional words from Vingegaard and Colbrelli

At the Tour de France, he became Jonas Vingegaard's favourite helper. After the accident, the Danish Tour winner paid tribute to him as a "dear friend and bodyguard. I will miss having you by my side in the peloton." Vingegaard was riding in the Tour of Spain at the time. The team dominated the Vuelta at will with Sepp Kuss as the winner and Vingegaard and Primoz Roglic on the other podium places and presented a jersey at the award ceremony to honour their team-mate.

The entire cycling world took part in Van Hooydonck's stroke of fate. Including the pros, who went through similar things to the long Belgian. Colbrelli shared an emotional post on Instgram. "I know what's going through your head. I know what you're feeling and I know the pain. I know your only question: why me? I know what it feels like to lie in hospital and realise that your career is 90 per cent over, but you don't want to admit it. But in these moments we have to be strong and remember that we are alive," wrote the Italian, who had to retire as the reigning European champion and Paris-Roubaix winner.

The team also bid farewell to its driver with warm words. But only to professional Nathan Van Hooydonck. The all-rounder, who joined the team in 2021 from BMC successor CCC and extended his contract by two years in 2022, was still officially under contract. Without further ado, a new job was found for him in the cosmos of Visma | Lease a Bike.

"The team has given me so much," he says, grateful for his work in the team's hospitality programme. "I can be together with my old team-mates from time to time - they are still my friends - and that really means a lot to me." Above all, however, it also keeps the connection to cycling alive. "Being at the races with the team's guests also helps me to deal with my situation."

Van Hooydonck: "I'm not in the mood for more right now"

As an ex-professional, Van Hooydonck knows the races from his own experience. He can provide the VIPs with valuable first-hand information as he swiftly and skilfully steers his van around the course in front of or behind the peloton. He can talk about race tactics, knows the key points, the drivers. And he knows how to properly supply his colleagues on the bike with a bottle of water or a spare wheel from the side of the course - after all, he's used this help himself often enough.

He likes his role for the moment. "I'm still in the circle, but not too much. And if I don't want to do it anymore, I can always stay away." Because there is a danger that it could all become too much for him. At the moment, he doesn't want to do more than spend a few days here and there travelling around with the team's guests to the most important races. "I honestly don't feel like doing more than that at the moment."

However, the lack of leisure is unlikely to be due to classic laziness, but rather the result of the difficult process of reorganising his life. Some might speak of burnout, others of signs of depression. Van Hooydonck doesn't talk like that, preferring to say: "As soon as I feel better, I'll do more again."

The path to real life

But most likely not a full-time job in the cycling industry. Sports director or coach? "Probably not." He adds, slightly defiantly: "I had just built up a career, made a name for myself. But life is more than just cycling. My interests go beyond that. I want to explore them properly first and see where they take me. If I dedicate myself to cycling again now, I'll be stuck there for at least ten years or so."

It doesn't really fit in with his life plans right now. "Friends of mine are now coming out of university or finishing their training to become a lawyer. I, on the other hand, have already finished my entire career." What remains? The leap into real life. "Cycling is a part of life. But being a professional cyclist is not real life. It's like a fairy tale. It's your hobby. The hobby you get paid for."

Cycling is a part of life. But being a professional cyclist is not real life. It's like a fairy tale. It's your hobby. The hobby you get paid for.

But Nathan Van Hooydonck has had enough of the hobby for now. "I want to find out what suits me, where I can perform and build a second career after the first." However, the bike will always play a role in some way. In the new life. "Where I have a wonderful wife and child waiting for me at home, who give me a lot of love and joy. No matter what I do, I will try to be as good as I can. And that will make me happy."