Cyclist
‘You need to have that killer mentality’: Victor Campenaerts profile
Search on YouTube and you’ll find a ten-minute video of Victor Campenaerts preparing for the 2024 Tour de France. The now 33-year-old Belgian is nestled down on his aero bars, shoulders squeezed in, training mask strapped to his mouth, perspiration streaming down his clean-shaven head, riding at a cadence that would leave mere mortals’ hips displaced.
He follows with a cold shower and indoor rowing to strengthen a back broken in 2023, before an outdoor effort in the Sierra Nevada mountains. We learn that Campenaerts rides with laces in his shoes rather than dials for aerodynamic, weight and comfort benefits. It’s a regime of military precision that’s typical of a time-triallist. Then, later in the video, he slips out of his robotic performance and opens his heart.
‘I love climbing in silence,’ he says. ‘You’re breathing heavily, you hear your heartbeat and you settle into a rhythm. I really enjoy that.’
That’s the paradox of Victor Campenaerts. He’s pragmatism meets romance, sense and sensibility, and is one of the most popular riders in the WorldTour as a result. He’s marginal gains wrapped in a soft blanket, and he has just enjoyed one of the most memorable years of his life, both professionally and personally.
Seeking security and support
It’s late in the year and Campenaerts carries the fatigue of a man who has completed two Grand Tours this season mixed with the conviviality of having also taken his maiden stage win at the Tour de France. He has become a father for the first time and has secured a return to one of the strongest teams in the peloton for 2025, Visma-Lease a Bike, making the move from his home of the past three seasons, Lotto-Dstny.
‘One of the main reasons I moved is that Lotto-Dstny couldn’t offer me a contract as they were still looking for a co-sponsor,’ he says. ‘At my age I had no desire to wait until October to sign a new contract. I thought, I’m over 30, what are my targets in cycling? How do I see myself as a cyclist? Winning a stage of the Tour was a career moment. I then realised I wanted to be part of a squad that wins the Tour de France.
‘I contacted a few teams who I thought could do that, but initially I didn’t contact Visma because I thought they wouldn’t have a place for me. Then they reached out to me. They’ve obviously won the Tour de France twice in recent years [with Jonas Vingegaard in 2022 and 2023] so they’re not a bad team to move to.’
January 2025 will see Campenaerts officially start his second stint at Visma after racing for them in LottoNL-Jumbo guise in 2016 and 2017. That’s seven years – a lifetime in pro cycling – over which both the Dutch team and the Belgian rider have matured. It begs the question, how does he feel the team and himself have changed in that time? And why did he leave in the first place?
‘I left on a positive note and eager for personal success. I had personal targets to strive for. The team respected that but said we have riders like Primož Roglič and Steven Kruijswijk who will be going for GC. You’ll need to be part of that puzzle and fit in around the team. We saw my career evolution differently, which was fine, so I moved on.
‘Since then, Visma has clearly grown beyond recognition. When I rode for them, they worked very scientifically and in a methodical fashion – they had a plan for everything – but had a low budget. And with a low budget comes low-budget riders who don’t have the best physical capacities. That changed. They secured new, bigger sponsors, got more money and attracted the biggest riders. I’m not surprised they’ve become one of the biggest teams in the world.
‘I’m no Tadej, Van der Poel or Van Aert, so I think with the capacities I have, I’ve probably achieved the most I can in the way of my own palmarès. Now I’m keen for team success. I want to be part of the puzzle.’
Campenaerts has nothing but praise for Lotto-Dstny – the staff, the riders, the atmosphere – ‘and it’s not like I won’t see them all again’. They’ll always have a place in his enormous, slow-beating heart thanks to the events of Thursday 18th July 2024.
One career, one moment
On a hot day in southeast France, the hilly 18th stage of the Tour de France – 179.5km from Gap to Barcelonnette – would see the GC leaders sit back and prepare for the final three days into Nice. This was one for the stage-hunters, which Campenaerts now was after spending much of his career pedalling against the clock.
After an active day in the peloton, the winner would come from a three-rider breakaway: Ineos Grenadiers’ Michał Kwiatkowski, gunning for the third Tour stage victory of his career; the young and relatively unheralded Mattéo Vercher from TotalEnergies; and Campenaerts, the baroudeur. In a formidable sprint, Campenaerts stormed to his first stage win at the Tour.
‘As a real professional you have to ride the Tour, you have to finish the Tour de France,’ Campenaerts said afterwards. ‘Winning a stage is everyone’s dream… I’m not a neo pro; I’ve been dreaming of this for a very long time.’
The snapshot of a tearful Campenaerts draped over his bars, sharing a video call with his girlfriend and newborn son, surrounded by soigneurs, journalists and photographers, is one of the defining images of this year’s Tour. For Campenaerts it proved a culmination of everything he’d learned in cycling.
‘From the moment the route was released it was clear that this would be a possible option to battle for the win. This was early November. The seed of an idea grew and grew. When I have a goal, I’m all in. That’s why I spent nine weeks on one altitude camp. I was just about to become a father. There was a lot going on.’
Of those nine weeks, just four were alongside his Lotto-Dstny teammates. That’s not unusual for a GC leader, but it is for a lone wolf seeking a sole stage victory. Campenaerts sought an edge. The rarefied air sharpened his aerobic performance and mental resilience, while giving him time to forge a strategy.
‘You observe the peloton. You know your capacity; you know the other riders’ capacity. You look through the teams and start thinking, “How will the breakaway take shape? Who should I be watching?” It’s a process.
‘I don’t win a lot of races [this was the 12th win of his professional career], but the races I do win, they never come as a surprise. They’ve been planned in my head to an extent that you can feel it coming. The crucial part in winning a race is to be clear of thought; you need to have that killer mentality, especially in the final stretch.
‘This was my apotheosis. It’s like all of my career I’d been preparing for this moment. I’ve never experienced such emotion before; in fact, I don’t even have the ambition to strive for the same kind of emotion again because that was a one-off, a dream.’
Cometh the Hour
Campenaerts’s stage win may have been a one-off, but it was not the first time he had found himself in the limelight. In 2019, he broke the Hour record, beating Bradley Wiggins’ previous best of 54.526km by riding 55.089km at the Aguascalientes Bicentario Velodrome in Mexico. So how did that compare to winning at the Tour?
‘The two are so different,’ he replies. ‘The joy of winning in France was the unpredictability. Clearly I wasn’t sure I’d win, not until Vercher attacked. Kwiatkowski then looked at me, I said I’m not good and he chased Vercher. I played my cards the best way I could and only in that moment did I know victory was mine.
‘For the Hour record I knew what Bradley’s time was, I knew how training had gone, I knew what the test results were saying, I knew I was strong as I was so focussed on time-trials in that period of my career. You know every pedal stroke brings you closer to success. It’s so measurable. I felt confident I’d break it but not by a huge margin. While I was proud and loved working with my team, breaking the record wasn’t that special anymore. Can you understand that? It almost felt logical.’
And would he ever consider going for Filippo Ganna’s current record of 56.792km? ‘No. The key to my Hour record was timing. I knew it wasn’t an impossible mark. That has changed with Ganna’s efforts.’
What has also changed since Campenaerts secured his Tour stage victory is his profile in a country where cyclists are feted as superstars.
‘A Tour stage win boosts your popularity,’ he says. ‘I remember enjoying dinner with my girlfriend in a restaurant and, at that moment, I thought that maybe it would be nice to not be recognised and have to do another selfie. I then started to imagine what it must be like for Tom Boonen. He’s long retired but he’s a national hero. I wonder if that attention impacts his quality of life in any way, especially as he lives in such a cycling region.
‘Cycling’s obviously big in Belgium but there is a geographical element,’ he adds. ‘I’m sure if I took my son and girlfriend out for dinner in Brussels – not in my cycling kit – no one would come up to me. It’s completely different in Ghent, as that’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Tour of Flanders country.
‘Then again, don’t get me wrong, I’m incredibly grateful to the fans. Races like the Tour and Vuelta drain you. You’re exhausted. But the energy you get in return from the spectators is even greater. I just remember that when you’re a cyclist, you’re a performer, an entertainer.’
Need to be the best
For the foreseeable future it’s all about taking a step back from the limelight to support Visma-Lease a Bike’s efforts to wrestle the maillot jaune back off Tadej Pogačar. Campenaerts will have to force his way into the Tour team first, of course, but if he doesn’t he’ll have two further opportunities because his contract runs until the end of 2027. And then?
‘Maybe that’s my last cycling contract. We will see. But I’d prefer to do one year too many than one year too few. If you do one too many, you’ve squeezed the lemon until you know there’s no more juice. If you left some juice in there, you might wonder how good the juice was that was still in that lemon.’
To continue the analogy, Campenaerts says he fancies taking on an Ironman when he’s retired, ‘though the competitive juices would have been squeezed by then, so it will be about experiencing the event’.
We’re not sure he won’t retain a zest for the age-group podium, as Campenaerts has form when it comes to triathlon.
‘I used to swim to a high level until my late teens and could swim 200m freestyle in two minutes flat – a decent time but not close to the Olympic finals. Around that time a statistic came out that only one male under 1.90m had reached a non-breaststroke Olympic final since the 1996 Atlanta Games. Me being 1.73m, I realised it would be difficult, if not impossible, to be the best in the world.
‘And that’s always what I wanted to be. I’ve had an ambition to be the best in the world, which is a big reason I went for the Hour record. Being the best in the world at something drives the imagination. An Olympic medal is cool but to say you’re the fastest person who’s ever lived in one sport, that’s super-cool.
‘So, I changed to triathlon. I rode with my dad and his mates, and knew I could handle a bike. I enjoyed the combination of swim and bike, and if it was just those two disciplines I’d be one of the best in the world. The problem was running. It was clear that at Olympic distance [1.5km swim, 40km bike, 10km run], if you couldn’t run three minutes a kilometre you wouldn’t challenge.
‘I was training with the Belgium national team at the time, so we made a plan that by 2012 I’d be able to run 100km a week to bring my run times down. But I never passed the 40km mark as I always succumbed to injury. That’s when I took a step back and thought if I want to be the best at something, maybe it will be cycling.’
For now life will be about supporting Vingegaard, raising his son Gustaf and inspiring youngsters, which he feels is his societal duty.
‘Engage with the youngsters and you’ve really contributed in a positive way to their lives. That can create so much more than just a few results.’
Campenaerts on…
Ironman World Championships
‘I’ve been to Hawaii to support a friend and the Ironman World Championships were insane. The atmosphere of a triathlon is crazy. It’s different to cycling and has its own charm. I want to be part of that one day.’
Fuelling his performance
‘I always like to go with basmati rice before a stage because it digests easily without feeling bloated, although I like to have fibre or else I feel empty all the time. I’m not on a strict vegan diet but when it comes to important races, I will 100 per cent skip lactose to avoid gastro issues.’
His popular vlogs
‘At last year’s Tour, my roommate Jasper De Buyst said we should start filming behind the scenes. I enjoyed it and it was a great way to engage with the fans.’
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