"Last year we tried to make the race extremely hard and still Pogacar won" - Visma's Campenaerts on exploring Tour de France winner's weak spots

Beating Tadej Pogacar in his terrain and when he is in peak form is proving to be mission impossible for virtually every rider in the peloton. Team Visma | Lease a Bike are well aware of that, and at last year's Tour de France they have deployed complex tactics to try and burn the Slovenian out. Whilst it didn't work, Victor Campenaerts provides some interesting insight into these tactics.

Whilst on a basic level the team depth can be used to position someone like Jonas Vingegaard well in all key moments, and to place specific riders in the breakaways in order to potentially help in key moments; it goes far beyond that.

Visma's performance team not only worked on their riders, but calculated Pogacar's numbers throughout the race, and explored new avenues through which they might crack him. “Look, last year we tried to make the race extremely hard and still Pogacar won," Campenaerts said in words to Het Nieuwsblad.

However that wasn't without trying. In the mountains the Slovenian simply had the upper hand, having the best W/Kg on most climbs that decided the race, having the endurance to perform over the brutal stages, the recovery to perform in each and every one of them, and having the team to support him in moments of pressure - physical and psychological.

Campenaerts explains how deep Visma went to try and find these difficulties in the Slovenian: "The team’s data analysts have analyzed everything. How much time did Jonas ride above his FTP in the Tour? Where do we estimate Pogačar’s FTP, and how much time did he ride above his FTP? So how many sugars (carbs, most likely, ed.) did they both burn? Could it be that we put Jonas into a bigger deficit than Pogacar?”

The math was made, the incredibly aggressive tactics throughout many hilly and even flat stages were deployed to try and lead to a hard moment that Vingegaard could take advantage of, but Pogacar simply did not crack a single time during the Tour and consistently put on strong performances. Visma had to settle for a second place.

Campenaerts himself put on the ride of a lifetime, performing in all terrains, showing his best ever climbing numbers, and proving to be a key part of Vingegaard's block both with valuable experience but also as a valuable contributor to the team's overall mood on the bus with his daily vlogs.

“Everyone keeps getting better. If you’d shown me the numbers I rode last year early in my career, I wouldn’t have said I could win a Grand Tour, but I would have been riding for the prizes in Paris-Nice," he believes. "The hard part is that the top riders like Pogacar, Vingegaard, Evenepoel and Van der Poel, keep improving year after year.”

Next year Campenaerts races the Giro d'Italia and Tour de France, following Jonas Vingegaard as a key right-hand man as has been the case in 2025. He is already aware of how the teams at the top level function, and has taken on his new domestique role better than anyone could've expected.

“In the Grand Tours it’s about watts per kilo but it’s also about who can perform when the team management comes to your room the day before and says: tomorrow you’re going to be at the front of the peloton at this point in the race, with the rest of the team in the wheel, and you ride until there are no riders left from other teams.”

He also provides insight into the riders that get selected to the Grand Tours, and are even signed. Often, results and overall racing performance matter more to Visma than the pure raw numbers that the riders can put on display:

“There are riders who smash everything in training, but then it doesn’t work in a race. Our performance team is very good at spotting that: who buckles under pressure, who brings something extra to the table, who might create a negative atmosphere on the bus," he explains.