His dream of winning the Tour as a teammate, his bond with De Lie and his departure from Lotto: the secrets of Victor Campenaerts in Saitama

Victor, you have chosen to end your season immediately after the World Cup. Was this break necessary for you after a very intense summer?

“I can't say that I felt completely empty but I had mentalized my calendar like that and it's true that the summer looked like a long tunnel for me. I did the Tour, Vuelta, Euro and World Cup When you have the chance to win a stage on the Tour you are inevitably immersed in a form of euphoria which does not really encourage you to stop. (laughs)… The Friday following the end of the Grande Boucle, I was already on my bike for a seven-hour training session. I would have also liked to raise my arms in the Vuelta but unfortunately that didn't work. I broke three ribs during a fall on the second stage but I didn't really want to talk about it because I had the feeling that if I talked about the subject, it would already be a little bit like I was looking for an excuse. After several weeks away from home, I especially wanted to relax a little with Nel and Gustaaf.”

You will join the Visma training | Lease a Bike next season. Have you already had contact with your coach and the staff?

“Yes, of course. There hasn't been a team meeting yet (Editor’s note: it is scheduled for the end of November) but I am already in very regular contact with my new trainer, the Dane Espen Aareskjold. He is very interesting and I feel that the flow will go well because he is closely interested in innovative subjects like mental energy. To take a concrete example, this approach attempts to better understand the resources that one puts into a long journey to Japan and its preparations. It's not the same as taking your car to buy bread. (laughs)… Espen is trying to see what impact this can have on the physical side.”

Do you already see a working methodology different from that at Lotto Dstny?

“Everything is much more organized there. It must be said that it is a team with greater financial resources and a larger staff. Here too, to take a very concrete example, I have already been provided with my bike for next season, but rather than asking me to come and pick it up from the race department, they took care of bringing it to me so that I would save four hours on the road.”

The marriage seems quite natural between your approach to your profession, which could be described as obsessive, and the Dutch structure's way of working, right?

“Yes, I agree with you. Even if the team has evolved a lot, it's not a leap into the unknown either since I raced in this team in 2016 and 2017. For the record , during my first season in a team that was then still called LottoNL-Jumbo, I was the first to arrive with my little scale in order to weigh my food. They looked at me with somewhat questioning eyes. (laughs)… Today, everything is taken care of and the staff has specialists in many fields. He didn't tell me like that but I am convinced that the performance manager Mathieu Heijboer, with whom I had already worked in the past, said during the meetings discussing my possible recruitment that I would have no problem in joining. 'integrate.”

How do you think your physical qualities will be exploited there?

“I am convinced that, given my profile, I am made to ride at the head of the peloton on hilly courses offering between 3000 and 4000 meters of elevation gain. The reason why I haven't really done it until now is that I wanted to try to enhance my personal achievements as much as possible by promoting my personal ambitions. I don't think I'm a genetic miracle but the quality that many people in the industry recognize in me is that I get 100% from my career. moment already, I now have the objective of winning the Tour de France as a teammate And, to achieve this, there are, without wanting to offend anyone, only three possibilities: become Vingegaard's partner. , Pogacar or Evenepoel.”

What would be your biggest dream: winning the Tour alongside Vingegaard or winning the Ronde or Roubaix as van Aert's teammate?

“I dream of parading on the Champs Elysées alongside the yellow jersey. I have always been impressed by the authority that the team of the general leader on the Tour exudes, it is often a bit like she who decides the scenario of certain stages, if she lets the breakaway slip away or not It generates a lot of respect But if I can also help Wout to win on a big cobbled classic, why choose. (laughs) ?”

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Do you therefore already have the assurance of being part of the selection for the Tour?

“No not at all, and the staff was very clear with me on that. I also think I can be useful on the cobbled classics since I live really close to most of the courses but it's another thing to do them a real objective I find the Italian Edoardo Affini very efficient in his work on this terrain but it is complicated to do it on all the classics when some sometimes follow one another every three days.

What is the nature of your relationship with Wout van Aert?

“We get along very well but I can't say we go to restaurants together every week (laughs)… Tiesj Benoot, on the other hand, is a true friend. He lives barely five kilometers from me and our respective partners get along very well.”

What assessment do you draw from your last three years at Lotto?

“If I had been asked before the start of my contract to sign for the report that I can present today, I would have done it. But things would have been different if I had not won this stage on the Tour de France. I think that a little taste of too little would still be in my mouth. I would have liked to win a Flandrian classic like À Travers la Flandre or the Nieuwsblad but it didn't quite work out the way I did. would have wanted it on this ground.”

Is it true that relations with CEO Stéphane Heulot had become complicated?

“We can say that we do not part as friends. Like all athletes, I am quite a proud person and I consider that I did not receive the respect that I thought I deserved during the negotiations on a possible extension. In a Flemish newspaper, when one of your colleagues asked him why I had not yet re-signed, he replied that he did not want to extend overpaid guys. I took it as an offense. runner? The value of each person is attributed by sometimes subjective criteria and the law of supply and demand, right?

Arnaud De Lie has often introduced you as his second dad. How do you see the future of the Belgian champion’s career?

“We have a pretty strong bond with Arnaud. When my son was born, he made a gift on the birth list with a little note: 'for my brother'. This is typical of the character. To work, he needs to be relaxed, without stress, to make jokes in the team. But as the classics approached this year, it was the very first time that I had the feeling that some form of pressure was on him. I think he felt like he was the real leader of the team, a responsibility that he hadn't fully had until then. The mind is a dimension that we too often neglect. On the Famenne Ardenne Classic and the rest of the season, Arnaud then rediscovered his joie de vivre and we saw that the results came back very naturally. It will take another step forward in 2025.”

You always seem to share your experience and knowledge very naturally. However, this is not always the case for certain runners who prefer to keep their recipes for themselves…

“When I played for NTT, my former teammate Enrico Gasparotto once told me that I was too nice and that it would one day turn against me. But I prefer to stay true to my personality rather than act against it. -nature…”

A bike that looks like an F1, an XXL course at altitude and the hormones of happiness: this is how Campenaerts won the 18th stage of the Tour