Victor Campenaerts: "If I win a race from Omloop to Roubaix, my season will be a success"

Victor Campenaerts has this season returned to Lotto Soudal where he is bringing a new set of ambitions in relation to what his last stay had. The team saw a time-trialist leave the team some years ago and this year took in a classics specialist, who is said to be bringing up the level within the team.

He was asked by Rouleur about the team's need to get UCI points to remain at World Tour level: "I’m very confident in the team. I signed a three-year contract and there was never a doubt in my mind that the team would not exist next year. I'm not worried about it. We have a great atmosphere in the team," Campenaerts said, vaguely addressing the question which has seemingly been a frequent response at Lotto Soudal. "It might look like that, but that's absolutely what we did not do. We talked as little as possible about hunting for points. If you wake up in the morning, and you think let's do this hard session because we want to score points to stay in the World Tour? That's not how I get motivated," he added.

Campenaerts adds: "We get motivated because we dream of winning races. We have a good group, we train hard and have a lot of joy in the victories that we have already. They are not coming from the fact that we are driven to score points. We are just driven to perform at the highest level and to win races."

Having had a very strong start to the season at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and Le Samyn, Victor Campenaerts is showing tremendous promise for big wins this season. He has raced but abandoned Strade Bianche this past Saturday despite injuries suffered at Omloop, but will now pass on Tirreno-Adriatico in order to recover properly towards the decisive block of cobbled classics.

He adressed the goals he has for the remainder of the spring: "My goal is to win a race between Omloop and Roubaix. If I win a race from Omloop to Roubaix, my season will be a success. Winning a race in Flanders, on the cobblestones, is very difficult, and it's my goal this year but it's also the goal for the rest of my career. If I can achieve it, maybe I have to stop cycling after that! But that's my goal, and if I win a race on cobblestones, I will think about a new goal. Maybe that goal will be to win another race on cobblestones."