Seven or eight years ago, Rouleur sold china mugs with a quote attributed to Fausto Coppi that read: “Age and treachery will overcome youth and skill.” Should we wish to update and augment our tableware selection I would propose the following quote-based design... “I fooled him to the max” – Victor Campenaerts. 

These words come as an answer to a burning question I have for the Belgian not long into our interview, namely how on earth did he manage to hoodwink Michał Kwiatkowski, one of the peloton’s most seasoned and savvy riders, into underestimating him so comprehensively on stage 18 of Tour de France 2024? 

“You should call him!” replies Campenaerts, laughing. 

Last year was Campenaerts’ debut Tour stage win, and I have been hearing in exquisite detail just how he mugged off not only Kwiatkowski, but almost every other rider in that 36-strong breakaway. 

“For me, one of the funniest moments in the breakaway, I came near to the front and there’s a small corner, a bit of an acceleration, and I act like I have to open up the gap because I’m so cooked. But we weren’t really riding that fast, it was early in the stage. And Bart Lemmen from Visma, he was riding in super good shape, but his experience is almost zero. I think it’s his second year as a pro. I acted like I couldn’t close the gap, and he passed me, and he easily closed the gap while looking at me and laughing in my face. Like, ‘You’re à bloc, at the limit already.’ It couldn’t have been better for me – people laughing at how much I was on the limit. I briefly talked with Kwiato but in the talking I tried to show as much as possible that I was suffering.” 

When I learned I would be interviewing Victor Campenaerts, the first thing that came to mind was a different moment at last year’s Tour de France. The winner’s press conference at the Tour is normally a laborious piece of video-link protocol where riders bat away obligatory and softball questions before being released from the truck to go and do things they actually want to do, like eat rice and lie down. Immediately following Campenaerts’ stage victory at the 2024 Tour, a journalist colleague sitting next to me with dyed pink hair asked Victor a question. Rather than answer immediately, Victor chose to say something else: “I like your haircut.” 

It was nothing. But it stuck in my mind; most cyclists do not do that. The next thing I did was sit down with a cup of coffee and write down everything I thought I knew about him. I came up with: “Aero-tuck, moustache, voice, breakaway, excess, vlogger, Hour Record, planner, sacrifice, odd-ball, a spot-better’s dream, mathematician (?), Carlien daten.” 

Campenaerts is the breakaway specialist, the Supercombativity prize winner of the 2023 Tour, Mr Marginal Gains, and an early adopter of all sorts of gizmos. When he got hold of an altitude mask he turned the dial up to 10,000 metres (very firmly in the Death Zone) to see what happened. He has a very long torso; good for aerodynamics and good for writing ‘Carlien daten’ on in a 2017 Giro time trial. He revealed the words on the start line and also as he crossed the finish line, to ask Carlien on a date (they dated; the relationship didn’t last). 

(Image: Kristof Ramon)

After Campenaerts won his Tour stage, his team-mate Arjen Livyns did a similar thing to me and wrote a list on X.com: “Moving to Spain during the winter, every morning cold baths, rollers, girlfriend who sells her business to go with him, pregnant and going on a 9 weeks altitude camp, a first child, aerofreak, mentally and fysical strong AF. One of the good guys.” 

However, I still had the sense that what I thought I knew about Victor Campenaerts was not who he actually was. I wasn’t quite turning to Victor in a breakaway and laughing at what I saw, but I was wary of this complex character, the real and the imaginary, and I didn’t want to do a Bart Lemmen. When we do speak, over video call, Campenaerts is horizontal on a sofa wearing a chocolate-brown sweater and a high-collared patterned shirt that pokes up around his chin and into deep stubble that accompanies the moustache. In that unmistakable voice that I can’t find the right word to describe but you know exactly what I mean, talk has turned to that stage of the Tour, Campenaerts’ real tour de force. I expect it to be a chat about chain wax, drag coefficients, aerodynamic socks and whatnot, but contrary to expectations he delves with forensic detail into the real business of being Victor Campenaerts. 

“I knew with experience that everyone is so tired in the last week,” he says of last year's Tour. “Opportunities are always there. It was clear that this [stage 18] was the breakaway stage. I think the designers of the parcours designed it as such. So I knew that would be my plan. 

“I always think it’s important to see first of all how you feel. Then how is the peloton moving? Who are the good riders? Who are the riders to keep an eye on?” he continues. 

“I won’t say Ineos did a terrible Tour de France, but they didn’t do the Tour de France they were hoping for. And I had some inside information that on the second rest day, one of the big owners, someone from Ineos, I don’t know who, maybe it was Dave [Brailsford] himself. One of the guys had some kind of serious speech for the team. And it involved something like, ‘We’re not here for sixth place on GC. I need a stage.’ So I knew from that moment that they will do whatever it takes on that stage, the ultimate breakaway stage. 

“The day before was not extremely hard, but it was still hard. I focused on saving energy and so I was in the gruppetto with [Mark] Cavendish, some covid-infected guys, and Kwiatkowski was also there. I talked to him and we knew already that we would see each other the next day in the breakaway. Also, I saw he was riding well. He had a plan for that stage, and I knew he had to win. So that was my free ticket for the tactical plan.” 

Once the groundwork had been laid, Campenaerts then had to work out how to get into the break. According to his Lotto-Dstny team-mate and compatriot Thomas De Gendt, there are few riders with a better 500-metre sprint than Campenaerts (as we will see) and it was in that strength that Campenaerts trusted. 

“Getting in the breakaway is always a tricky one. You need to be in if you want to win, but you can’t waste too many bullets just to be there. From all the stages I had been at the front [of the race], I could feel how the peloton was acting on the early breakaway. 

“I could say – and I even said it in interviews and on the bus beforehand – that at kilometre 28, the breakaway would have a small advantage, and that would be where I would do a jump with a one-minute effort to reach the break. And that’s all you’re gonna see of me at the start of the race.” 

Watching the stage again there is indeed a moment with 28 kilometres gone where, halfway up the Col du Festre, the front group of 35 riders is lined out with the peloton in hot pursuit. The move comprises some big names of the Tour including Wout van Aert, Richard Carapaz, Jai Hindley, Oier Lazkano and Michael Matthews, some of whom have been battling to make the break stick for the last 10 kilometres. There is no Victor Campenaerts. But as the race snakes its way around some broad hairpins – the only ones on the climb – the helicopter shots show one rider zooming up from the bunch to the break. The director then cuts to Mark Cavendish getting dropped. Then cuts back to the break. Campenaerts is there. 

“You have to gamble to win. And from that point, my eyes were on Kwiato.”

Campenaerts’ preparation for the stage had begun in the autumn when the parcours was announced. Ahead of the stage he opted for time-trial tyres – lighter, faster and more supple but less hard-wearing and more slippery on the descents – because the weather was fine and the technical descents would come long before the finish. At the post-race press conference Campenaerts admitted that these tyres were all but shredded by the time he made it to Barcelonnette. 

Campenaerts’ point now is that such marginal technical gains will only get you so far, especially in a peloton that is rapidly catching up. No longer is he a curious outlier when he rocks up with an extreme aero position, custom shoes and 58-tooth chainring. Real gains, he explains, are now to be found in what amounts to a combination of a tactical intelligence agency and, I would add, expressive pantomime. 

(Image: ASO)

“There were some experienced riders in the break, but also nowadays a lot of riders are millennium babies. They’re just super young. And they can smash the pedals like nobody else, but they are less good in the tactical game. 

“From the moment I was in that break I hid myself in the back, and I was pulling faces. Dirty faces. Every now and then I did a relay to come totally to the front, and then to the back again, because I needed to make sure everybody saw I was at the limit.” 

Crunch time came on the final categorised climb, the Côte des Demoiselles Coiffées, with 45 kilometres to go. Kwiatkowski’s Ineos team-mate Geraint Thomas strung the group out, splits started to form, and the Lotto-Dstny sports directors started to get worried. Campenaerts, however, recalled that Thomas had been in the breakaway 24 hours earlier and had ridden in support of Laurens De Plus. So he conserved his energy, kept his eyes on Kwiatkowski, and was not surprised when the Pole attacked just before the summit of the climb with 40 kilometres to the finish. 

“I gambled a lot,” continues Campenaerts. “I waited for three or four minutes until the group was getting quite tired and stretched out, and I attacked from about position 25. 

“Riders are not stupid. They know an attack from behind is dangerous because when they pass the front, they have so much speed. But when there has been a hard fight on a hill, when it’s a 30-guy group riding wheel to wheel, you can almost rank the riders’ freshness on where they are in the line. The last rider is more cooked than the second to last. So I attacked from almost last position. One guy had the morale to stay in my wheel, [Mattéo] Vercher, but when I passed guys like Wout van Aert I was already going 60 kilometres per hour. It’s too difficult for them to jump on the wheel. 

“Then we bridged over. I think to Kwiato and me it was quite clear that, with all the respect, Vercher wouldn’t be the big danger in that group. 

“I was begging Kwiato to take me with him on the slightly uphill parts, telling him that he needed me on the flats. I was trying to play a game, to make him think that I would be happy with a top-three place. 

“In one moment, he says, ‘We can sprint for the victory, no attacks.’ And I say, immediately, ‘Yes, we sprint for it. It’s an honour to sprint against you. The only thing that I want is after the stage you post a picture.’ 

“It’s a long story, but the year before he got a headband from me with my nickname, ‘Vocsnor’, on it, and I knew he still had it. So I told him the only thing I wanted was for him to post a picture after the race with my headband. I think Kwiato must have thought, ‘This guy is totally retarded. He’s going to ride me to a Tour de France victory, and he’s just happy with third place. He’s not even going to attack me.”

The rest is history. Coming into Barcelonnette, Campenaerts clung to Kwiatkowski’s wheel, fired his final bullet – that 500-metre explosive power – and smoked Kwiatkowski in the sprint after Vercher had gone long. I say to him that there are two astonishing things here: his ability to play this game of poker so well in the midst of a break in the final week of the Tour, in 35-degree heat, and that riders would fall for it. 

“I have to say those days are quite rare for me,” says Campenaerts. “I don’t win often, but when I win, it’s not out of the blue. It’s not that suddenly I say, ‘Woah, I have good legs today, let’s go for it.’ It’s more that it comes from a plan that I want to plant in my head, and I want to believe in it so much that I actually do believe in it. It is in my head for such a long time that I have been through all the scenarios. But it’s rare that I can think that clearly.”

Campenaerts is from Hoboken, and not the one in New Jersey. The original is a place described by Tripadvisor as both “a very depressing industrial suburb of Antwerp” and “an awful place to live and visit”. 

His parents divorced when he was four but maintained a good relationship as Campenaerts spent alternate weeks with each. The first significant milestone in Campenaerts’ life that he can remember came in 1996, when Sony unleashed the first ever Playstation onto a generation of youngsters. 

Campenaerts’ favourite game was either the turn-based artillery strategy game Worms (as a fellow millennial, he and I are on common ground here) and something called Kula World, which I had to look up. Wikipedia tells me: “Various elements and obstacles are introduced as one moves on to new levels, which means that the complexity and level of puzzle solving required gradually increases as the game progresses. The game involves making ingenious use of the various types of platforms and surrounding objects.” 

Sometimes these metaphors write themselves. Yet if Campenaerts’ tactical strategy was honed by blowing up 32-bit invertebrates, his competitive spirit was nurtured when his parents decided young Victor was spending far too much time on his console. After showing little talent for art or music – father Gino was a drummer with a band called Soul Sucker that one source describes as “a pretty weird band from Antwerp” – his parents forced him to go swimming. Racing up and down the pool quickly became his life. 

“I left home at 6:30am in the rain on my city bike,” he says of a typical day. “I got to the pool and hung out my clothes so that they would dry a little bit. I would swim for an hour and a half, get back into those damp, cold clothes, go to school, eat some sandwiches before the lessons started, and do a whole day of lessons. I was eating so much. Hopefully my clothes had dried. Then I’d go to the gym for an hour. 

“Then in the sports hall I’d have some sandwiches to reload and from seven to nine it was swimming training again. Then I rode home on my city bike in the dark. My mother would make the biggest plates of food. I don’t think I would be able to finish one of those plates these days. Somehow after that I had to do my homework. They were the hard days. I look back and realise, compared to that, pro cycling is a holiday.” 

When he hit his teenage years Campenaerts realised that his height of 173cm would make an Olympic medal statistically all but impossible (only one male swimmer under 190cm has made an Olympic swim- ming final in a non-breaststroke event since Atlanta 1996, he assures me). After a brief but injury-riddled dalliance with triathlon, he fell into his father’s sport of cycling. Aborted engineering studies were followed by two years at Topsport Vlaanderen and then a near-perfect palindrome of a professional career. 

Two years at LottoNL-Jumbo were followed by two at Lotto Soudal, where he would place third at the World Championships time trial in 2018 and break the Hour Record the following spring. It was the pinnacle of his success as a time-trial specialist that also saw him twice European champion. Then followed two seasons at NTT/Qhubeka, where he won a Giro stage in 2021, before he went back to Lotto for three seasons. Next year he will return to LottoNL-Jumbo in its current iteration of Visma-Lease a Bike on a three-year deal. 

On the announcement of the deal, Visma team sports director Grischa Niermann opined that: “By now, he [Campenaerts] is also a very experienced rider known for his pursuit of innovations. We can really use that experience.” “Maybe they bought a cat in a sack!?” 

Campenaerts replies to me with a smile. “Do you say that in English? You bought something, but you’re surprised it’s actually not worth anything.” He’s joking, of course. During his previous stint on Visma he became something of a team guinea pig, the kind of low-risk experimental rider who was precise, obsessive, willing to try stuff and good at recording data (although he would occasionally do something that annoyed the team like refusing to ride with sponsor-issue quick release skewers because they were not aerodynamic enough).

This autumn the team have hired a new aerodynamic coach, Jamie Lowden, and see Campenaerts as an - other key weapon to help them regain the lead in the sport’s technological arms race, to say nothing of his potential to be a mixture of super-domestique, tractor, leadout man, wrecking ball and Classics wildcard. 

“I don’t want to overstress it, but I think I do have a good sense for looking for where there is innovation,” says Campenaerts. “I do know my mathematics, but I’m not an engineer. I don’t have the brains to really come up with the most crazy calculations. But I’m in the peloton. Like, we put so much time into this aerodynamic suit. But why are we riding with a radio that is so much exposed to the wind on that position on the back?” 

Visma’s gain will be Lotto’s loss; Campenaerts worked closely with bike sponsor Orbea to develop the prototype frame he rode to victory at the Tour. As for the next innovation, he says: “I wish that I knew, and if I knew I wouldn’t tell you.” 

Not radios, then. Unless Campenaerts is bluffing, again. Most people’s memory of Campenaerts’ Tour stage win were his tears: on the line, on the podium, in the press conference. The first thing he did was call his girlfriend and their infant son Gustaaf, who had been born at the foot of Sierra Nevada while the pair were at altitude camp together in the months leading up to the Tour. After that, congratulations came in from team-mates and rivals alike. 

Despite the skulduggery and ‘dirty faces’, Campenaerts is held in high regard. Remco Evenepoel gave him a signed white jersey after stage 18 with the dedication Vor Snor, ‘for Snor’, a play on his nickname ‘Vocsnor’ (to his friends at school Victor became Voctir or Voc, and he had a moustache, or snor in Flemish, hence Vocsnor). 

The evening of stage 18, Kwiatkowski stayed true to his word and posted a picture of himself in his Vocsnor headband, posing in his Belgian rival’s unmistakable aerodynamic position. What made the success so sweet was the jeopardy that had been facing Campenaerts and his girlfriend, Nel, a few months earlier. Having decided that they wanted to start a family, Nel sold her pharmacy business in Belgium and, heavily pregnant, accompanied him to Sierra Nevada, where Campenaerts would say he was the first to arrive at the popular altitude training resort and the last to leave. For much of that time Campenaerts didn’t have a contract. 

“Imagine if for some reason I wouldn’t have a contract and my girlfriend sold her pharmacy less than a year ago. It would have been a big fuck up.” 

Then things turned, at first with a contract offer from Visma-Lease a Bike and then on Gustaaf’s arrival.

(Image: Kristof Ramon)

“The day after Gustaaf was born, I told my coach that I would take one more day off and enjoy the moment. Then the day after that I will restart my training,” recalls Campenaerts.

“My coach put up the schedule and it was the hardest training week, and especially the longest week on the bike I have ever done. But it was so easy. It was like I didn’t need any rest.”

It’s not uncommon for riders to experience what Campenaerts described as “like riding on clouds,” whether through falling in love or a new child. Whatever it fully comprises – hormones, positive mental health – it can be one hell of a performance enhancer. “You should be able to time it, if you could...” says Campenaerts. 

“I think I timed it very well. “We were in the car yesterday, my girlfriend, my son... We were actively thinking, ‘What else could we wish for?’ And there’s nothing in our minds.” 

At this point I would recommend that falling in love should not be viewed solely as a strategic part of any pro cyclist’s training plan. Riders searching for unusual performance gains could, however, follow Campenaerts in establishing a daily video blog, although they might find it hard to cram as many stars into its line-up (Pogačar, Roglič, Evenepoel and Van Aert this year alone). 

“What I think about more often – maybe because I’m older than the new generation of riders – is that it’s a highly underestimated thing how much you can inspire people as a cyclist. Inspiring those people also gives me a lot of energy,” he says. “Happiness is, I know, not a life-changing thing. But still, you have the power as a cyclist to give joy to other people. Yes, it is just this much energy from you, for a huge return from these people. Sometimes I try not to moan about it, but I think a lot of riders are not willing to give this much energy. 

“Cyclists my age [Campenaerts turned 33 on October 28] have this feeling that for such a long time you think you’re a rookie, you’re learning, and your day will come. Suddenly, in the blink of an eye, you think, fuck, I’m one of the oldest guys in the peloton. And my chances now are limited. You don’t realise it’s the prime of your career. It’s money time. Now it’s all gonna happen. 

“You’re always making ambitious goals, and sometimes you forget to enjoy it a bit or allow yourself to be happy with what you achieved already. “I think that it was almost the moment of my career when I jumped across to Kwiatkowski. I was in so much pain before I made that decisive attack. But you realise there’s a very big chance I won’t ever have this situation in my career again. It’s now or never. And you are more willing to accept just the most terrible, terrible pain you can imagine to bridge across. 

“And then of course the tactical game comes into play again with pulling faces. But the pain... There was a time of several seconds where I convinced myself: I’m in the Tour de France, I’m in the break, maybe they will close the gap, I can be pleased with myself that I made it, but grab your balls together, you know. You have a son. What are you gonna tell your son, that you were 12th on a Tour stage? Just accept the pain, try to bridge across, and if it doesn’t work out, at least you tried. 

“I think that is sometimes more difficult when you’re younger and you think that if it’s not today, it will be next year. I realised that there will be many beautiful things still coming in life. And I look forward to my son growing up. But becoming a dad, winning a Tour de France stage, doing all of that together, the preparation with my girlfriend at my side all the time... The combination of those things, this will be a very hard thing to top. You’ve seen the emotions. I don’t think it needs to be a goal to have that again in your life.” 

Victor Campenaerts: aero-tuck, moustache, voice, breakaway, excess, vlogger, Hour Record, planner, sacrifice, oddball, a spot-better’s dream, mathematician (!), Carlien daten, cold baths, aerofreak, mentally and fysical strong AF. One of the good guys. Now, a Tour de France stage winner, and something of an inspiration to all.