"I have one big goal left in my career" - Victor Campenaerts closes circle as he returns to Visma | Lease a Bike
Cycling
One of the world's best time trialists at his prime, Victor Campenaerts will next year return to the team where he has had some of his best cycling successes. As a completely different rider with great palmares and priorities thrown upside down, he returns to Visma | Lease a Bike where it all started 8 years ago.
"I was not really satisfied with my opening Classics," Campenaerts told Cyclingnews as he looked back on the early season challenges during this contract year. "And then after that, I also was struggling a bit with the fact that suddenly I was not too certain anymore about my future in cycling."
Initially, Campenaerts was content with the idea of staying at Lotto Dstny but later it became clear that the team was in a bit of a trouble. "The team that I was riding for, and verbally we [had] more or less agreed in January, but suddenly it seemed like it would be difficult to stay in Lotto so it gave me a bit of uncertainty." Therefore an offer to join Visma | Lease a Bike came at the right time.
Campenaerts had ridden for the team, known as LottoNL-Jumbo at the time, in 2016 and 2017, however back then the goals of the two parties didn't necessarily align. "I was younger than I am now and I was full of ambitions, let's say mostly personal ambitions, and I just didn't fit in with the team vision," said Campenaerts.
The team was focused on what they could achieve with Primoz Roglic and, at that time, also Steven Kruijswijk. "It was a higher ambition than my personal ambition so it was not a match at that moment," said Campenaerts.
"They just said it's better for you to go to a team where you can strive for your own ambition and I totally agreed. So that's what I did. I went for personal success and I achieved, let's say, some personal success – success I'm very proud of."
The circle now closes as with age, the priorities of Campenaerts have shifted. "I'm now very satisfied and maybe a bit saturated with personal success and I have one big goal left in my career, and that is winning the Tour de France on the team, being in a successful team," said Campenaerts. "I saw the match with Visma was really good."
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- Yeh he is cool. I hope he has a good year.1stpastthepost14-01-2025
- Lol good one. I hope Mr Angry gets the point.1stpastthepost14-01-2025
- Go in peace my friend. Eat some fruit and move on.roadman5412114-01-2025
- Killing is not something you can get by with by saying you're sorry. What kind of a person you need to be to kill for fun? How will end a person who starts with killing? Trek has a big + for me forever, for getting rid of him.mikolajjj14-01-2025
- In reality, the one thing Roglic needs to do is not crash.mdemartino14-01-2025
- Okay lets turn this around. So you mikolaiji did something wrong that you regretted. In retrospect thinking it over you realised your mistake you apologised, said you where sorry about what you had done and then tried to move on with your life and put it behind you. Would you like to be reminded of it by some anonymous person on a forum?roadman5412114-01-2025
- Alaphilippe exhudes character.roadman5412114-01-2025
- Comment is nasty? And killing cats for fun is cool?mikolajjj14-01-2025
- Oh he said he was sorry? I guess we can forget it then, that he killed a cat just for fun! Such a nice boy, always says "hello".mikolajjj14-01-2025
- You are out of order there mikoli! No need for that sort of nasty comment.1stpastthepost14-01-2025