INTERVIEW: VICTOR CAMPENAERTS
DESPITE REACHING HIS PHYSICAL BEST IN TIME TRIALLING IN 2020, VICTOR CAMPENAERTS HAS RECONCILED HIMSELF TO THE FACT THAT THE GAP TO THE TOP RIDERS MAY BE UNBRIDGEABLE. SO HE’S STARTING AFRESH, TURNING TO THE COBBLED CLASSICS AND AGGRESSIVE ROAD RACING
The World Hour Record holder tells Procycling about his new ambitions in the sport beyond time trialling
It’s great because I live with my girlfriend now and it’s also a good place for training. It’s right in the centre where all the Flanders classics are and I will do my first cobbled races this year so I have a lot of opportunities to do recons every day. We love the place.
I’m from Antwerp but Antwerp is not that good for cycling because it’s quite a big town and it’s not that easy to get out of the traffic.
I actually lived in Gavere when I was a first and second-year professional, I lived over here with a friend that was in the same team at that time. I went to Lotto-Jumbo and I moved again to Leuven, where Brabantse Pijl is, and I lived there for quite a long time, and now I’ve moved back to Gavere. It’s more a coincidence, we were looking for a house and found this one that happens to be 500 metres away from where I used to live.
I reached a real high level in time trialling last year, maybe the highest level I’ve ever reached in my career.
But compared to the other riders, if you see the steps Ganna made and Remco and Wout, they are now on a completely different level and it’s a gap that is not so easy to bridge. I will still focus on time trialling because time trialling is what I can do best - let’s say I am still in the top five or for sure the top 10 best time triallists in the world, and I still have the World Hour record. But the thing is if you want to win a time trial you have to be the best, you cannot win by luck, and it will be very difficult or almost impossible to win a WorldTour time trial because I will always have to beat one of the super strong guys.
It is not easy. I wish it were different but you just need to be realistic.
In 2018 I participated in the Giro and I had some results before, but not really great results. I said that I would take the pink jersey in Jerusalem. Nobody, not one journalist, took me seriously but I came close. I was in third place, on the same time as Rohan Dennis and only 1.3 seconds behind Tom Dumoulin. I worked it out really well, so I was being realistic at that point. But at this point I also need to be realistic, especially with Remco, Wout and Ganna - but also Pogacar and Stefan Küng. If they are healthy
I’m at home in Gavere, I moved just after the Giro last year.
and on a good level it’s not possible for me to beat them. I will still try, but it would maybe be stupid to continue focusing 100 per cent on time trials because it might also be really difficult to get selected for the Olympics, Worlds or even Europeans.Every nation has only two spots and we have Wout and Remco. It might be possible that I don’t get a chance in a championship. That’s why I opened up to look more into aggressive road racing.
Last year I was new in the team and except for the Giro team we never really got to know each other.
We spent so little time together because the whole season was in lockdown. Now, it’s like a new team. We have some riders that are still together from last year but mostly the team changed. We have the same staff, but in general the atmosphere is like a new team, just really fresh. Everybody in the team was a bit uncertain about his future last year, and this also gives a great vibe. Everybody knows that there is a chance that they would not have been a cyclist this year, so this makes everybody ready to fight.
I am really looking forward to the classics and I really look forward to riding on the cobblestones tomorrow, to do some sections and try to find some good lines.
Before, I always tried to avoid cobblestones. If you don’t think there is any purpose in riding on them, they are not nice because you cannot go easy on them. Until we made my 2021 programme I didn’t really enjoy riding on cobbles, but from that moment I got excited about it. I do almost every section of cobbles I can in training. It is also, I think, a benefit, that I only started racing the classics now. Yves Lampaert and Tiesj Benoot are good friends of mine and they both live close to me but when I was doing recons in December they were like, why are you going on the cobbles now? I’ve been doing a lot more recons than everybody else. Okay, they have been racing on the parcours for several years so have another advantage on me. But when there is a new hole somewhere in a cobbled section I will know it better than them.
In 2017 I was ninth in Brabantse Pijl. It’s a cobbles race but the hills are kind of the same as we have in the Ardennes races.
Those hills are suitable for me. You don’t have to be a real climber for them but it’s not too bad when you are a little bit light. I am 68kg, which is not too heavy, but a lot of the cobbled riders are heavier. The parcours suits me well, but in Flanders it’s all about being well positioned before every cobbled section, every small hill. If you are not in, let’s say, the top 20 of every hill you will waste a lot of power. This is different compared to the Ardennes classics, which are all about watts per kilogramme and it’s a different kind of racing - it’s more of a predictable race.
Before I was a cyclist I was studying engineering. I really like maths and physics.
I had just started as a cyclist and I already felt quite confident that I could do something with it. I asked my parents if I could quit and try to become a cyclist and they said it was okay but I had to pay a wage to stay at home. So I worked parttime in a cycling store. I have a physics background, so I can do a lot of calculations myself.
In 2017, 18, I really started to get into time trialling.
I got really good results by getting specialised. I don’t have the
biggest engine in the peloton.
I was not pushing high power, but I get super good results by figuring everything out, like my most aerodynamic position. How to put my helmet on my head - I ride without a visor because we found that I am faster without a visor. I tested many different warm-up protocols and it meant I could win some good time trials and I had some good results. All because I just went into every detail. Now, it looks like more riders have also gone into every detail and if you have a guy like Filippo Ganna and he averages 100 watts more over a time trial than I do...
I still try to look for more details but I think I’ve looked at most of them. Also, the thing is when you look into something, people only copy you, so it’s only in a few time trials that you have the benefit of it. In 2018 I was the first rider to get full custom-made handlebars, then the UCI banned them for no reason. In the end, I was able to ride with them but now everybody is riding with those handlebars. I also ride with magnesium powder on my hands - like rock climbers, to have more grip. That can be really useful in technical time trials. Now all the riders are doing the same thing. That’s what I would do if I saw somebody else who had a great idea. They get the same benefit that you have.
Everybody looks at altitude as the key factor to get to a high level in cycling, but everybody does the same thing.
The doctor I worked with has done several PhDs about altitude and if you see the people who go to Base Camp to climb Mount Everest, they have a lot higher haematocrit or haemoglobin levels than cyclists have. So what did they do differently? That’s what we looked into. I think that’s also the way to be better than somebody else, if you think that you are not more talented. If you are more talented than somebody else and you do the same thing then you will be better in the end, or at least that is what I believe. But if you are not as talented or equally talented, you should do something else, or something better to make the difference. Some things I have tried were not beneficial at all. But most things we try have a benefit.
In an Hour record it’s really rewarding because every little detail will give you a benefit every single lap.
And also, you can really easily track if a detail is beneficial. Yes or no, and it’s super scientific. You can calculate everything. We knew almost exactly what distance I would cover when we started preparing for the Hour record. It’s a lot of work to be totally adapted to the altitude and being totally in the rhythm that you need to ride, but it was really easy to track what level you are at, and everything is rewarded really well. It took a lot of preparation, of course, but it was easy mentally to make all the sacrifices because we were almost certain I would beat the record. You can sacrifice a lot, but then you don’t know if your opponent will be in better shape, or you don’t know how he will act. I enjoyed breaking the record but I enjoyed preparing a lot more.
When I started as a swimmer I started at a really young age and as soon as I did one competition I had only one drive and that was to be the best.
Quite soon, let’s say at the age of 16, I discovered that I might be the best in Belgium one day but that would be really difficult with my height because I’m not too tall. So I decided to
563m
THE DISTANCE CAMPENAERTS EXTENDED THE WORLD HOUR RECORD BY IN 2019
try and go to triathlon and see what I could achieve there, but I had a lot of running injuries, and cycling went really well for me. In the beginning, the first year, I was doing some cycling competitions and I did not do a single time trial but in the second year I did a time trial and immediately
I had a third place in the provincial championship - something really small. But then I also had a sixth place in the nationals. I immediately saw I was more talented at time trialling.
I was always really surprised that I could get such good results with such low watts compared to other riders.
Of course, you don’t know all the powers that other riders were pushing but you know your team-mates’ power. I was rooming with someone who pushed 50 watts more than me, which is significant, but he was not even in the top 100 and I was third place in that time trial, or something like that. In the beginning I often thought maybe my power meter was reading the wrong numbers. After a while I got used to it, but maybe it was naive to think that this kind of evolution would never come.
I think Alex Dowsett is really similar to me, except that he came a few years earlier than me.
What he did in time trialling was innovative at the moment he was doing it, and he was aerodynamic at the time no one was even thinking about it. And I became super aerodynamic when everybody was already somewhat aerodynamic on the bike. I like him a lot as a rider and we talk a lot - I really want him to break my Hour record and if he does I will kick his ass again! When he won his stage at the Giro, for me it was like, f*ck, I can do the same thing and I want to do the same thing. He was also in the breakaway on stage 20 when I was in second place, but it was somewhat of an eye-opener that with a little bit more luck or a little bit better tactics I could have won a stage in the Giro and not in a time trial.
The Giro gave me confidence.
And also when I look back at the Vuelta in 2018, I was fifth in one stage. But I was racing so stupidly that everybody who watched the stage was kind of angry at me that I didn’t win with the legs I had. In 2019, in the Tour of Belgium I won a stage with an attack in the Ardennes, and Remco Evenepoel was second or third. Not many riders can say that they’ve beaten Remco Evenepoel. That was also out of a break. Then at the Giro you see it’s damn hard to win time trials so you just try to open your eyes and think, maybe if I just do a little bit more work in training
on my road bike I will improve, and that’s really exciting. I am not an old professional rider but I am not fresh in the peloton any more. It’s really exciting that I have some totally new goals and like I said before, I’m excited to do every training session.
I was really, really focused on the Olympic Games for many years and have also been talking about it in the press a lot, about how I was focused on it.
For all these years, it seemed like nobody in Belgium really cared a lot about time trialling. At some point we went to the World Championships and the DS asked me which rider did I want to take to room with, because we didn’t have somebody who was motivated to go for a good result. Now, in one year, it’s changed to me hoping to be really lucky to still be able to go to one championship. At this moment in time, I’m not in the selection of the Olympic Games. Of course,
I am not satisfied with that. The first time trial I’m doing this year is in Paris-Nice and we will see. I will do whatever I can and I am on a really good level now, but the question is: what is the level of Remco and Wout?
My girlfriend wants to do her last high level competition in the Tokyo Olympics.
She’s already been two times, and she has had good results. She has been a European champion like I have been, she has won a bronze medal in the worlds, just like me. But she never performed well in the Olympics and she wants to close her career in a really good way. The 200m breaststroke, her best event, is on the same day as the time trial so that would have been really something nice to work for together. But unfortunately it will be really hard for me to be part of that.