Sven Nys was first to speak with Lucinda Brand immediately after European Championship drama: "Is that enough to ultimately relegate someone'

Brand entered the home stretch alongside Schreiber, where she had to stop pedalling for a moment during the sprint. In the end, the Luxembourg rider won by a decent margin, which Brand seemed to be able to accept.

After the competition, the Dutch skater was the first to congratulate Schreiber on her title, until they were both called over to the judges' car. There, Brand was told that she was, after all, the European champion, leaving Schreiber stunned. “This is disrespectful,” she grumbled repeatedly.

"It's hard to give a proper interview about this," Nys begins with a warning. "Sometimes the world of elite sports can be harsh; they both deserved it, but one of them went home disappointed. That leaves me with mixed feelings."

Nys spoke with Brand right after the race. “Lucinda came up to me right after the finish and said, ‘Yeah, she deserved to win; she was faster in the sprint.’” "You just have to accept that, but anyway, it’s the jury itself that decides that a title is apparently enough to relegate her to second place."

"We're going to take this very calmly and, above all, not get too carried away, because I don't think it's fair either. It's the jury's decision. We have a European champion, but I also think it’s a real shame for Marie Schreiber, who ultimately goes home as the loser. That shouldn’t have happened,” Nys says, leaving no doubt about his feelings on the matter.

"The jury has really been poring over it, of course. They can rewatch that footage 37 times. I only saw the sprint and, other than that, very little—or just a brief glimpse on a small screen," explains Nys, who is the first to offer a realistic account in Zeddam.

"We had basically resigned ourselves to second place, and okay, she strayed a little bit from her line. But is that enough to ultimately relegate someone to second place in a championship?"

To ask the question is to answer it.