Jonas Vingegaard has deliberately asked to have Victor Campenaerts beside him for the Giro d'Italia, and the Belgian is expected to be one of his main right-hand men when the race starts in Bulgaria and ends in Rome. Vingegaard said in the mixed zone into VTM's microphone that Campenaerts is “very important” to him, and added that he had almost chosen the Belgian's programme for him.
Campenaerts, speaking at the team presentation in Burgas, said Vingegaard has been relaxed throughout the build-up and pointed to a strong start to the season, with wins at Paris-Nice and Catalunya. He said Visma completed a long altitude camp together at Mount Teide in Tenerife and that the team had prepared the race well. “I would say Jonas has been very relaxed at training camp,” Campenaerts said. “If you already have victories, it makes it more relaxed, and we just had a very good time.”
The Giro matters for Visma because it is the squad's second major target as a team, after Wout van Aert's Roubaix victory for its Monument ambitions, and because Vingegaard's effort is the first half of an attempted Giro d'Italia-Tour de France double. The race will ask for 15 days of racing across a route that begins in Bulgaria before finishing in Rome, and Campenaerts said that alone makes the pink jersey in the Italian capital a milestone he has not had before. “We've prepared this Giro very well,” he said.
There is also a less polished edge to the partnership. Campenaerts said he and Vingegaard do not spend the off-season going out to dinners with their families, even though they race together often and have grown used to each other on and off the bike. “It often surprises me that people think it's all super serious for us, but actually, we have a lot of fun,” he said. The open question now is whether that ease can hold once the mountains, pressure and tactics of the Giro begin to bite.
