'It often surprises me that people think it's all super serious for us' – Jonas Vingegaard's right-hand man Victor Campenaerts on Visma's Giro d'Italia build-up

Grand Tour winners down the years have often had a right-hand man, and for heavy favourite Jonas Vingegaard at the upcoming Giro d'Italia, that will be Belgium's Victor Campenaerts.

As versatile as they come, and a vital helper in both the chaos of navigating sprint finishes and in leading out the Dane on the climbs, Campenaerts' talents as a domestique de luxe were something that Vingegaard specifically requested for the race from Bulgaria to Rome.

"For sure, Victor [Campenaerts] is very important for me. I asked deliberately to have him here with me," said Vingegaard in the mixed zone to Belgian broadcaster VTM's microphone. "I mean, I almost chose his programme for him, so obviously I'm also happy racing with him."

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At times, Campenaerts is something of a clown on the team, described by several of his teammates as the funniest member of the group, but when it's time to get serious, he's a ruthlessly dedicated worker for his leaders.

Campenaerts makes this reality clear when asked to describe the atmosphere of Visma's intense, but in other ways relaxed, pre-Giro altitude camp up at Mount Teide in Tenerife. According to him, Vingegaard has been composed in the months leading up to what is the first half of his Giro d'Italia-Tour de France double attempt, arriving off the back of a limited, but successful, 15 days of racing only in 2026.

"I would say Jonas has been very relaxed at training camp. Of course, he had a good start to the season, winning Paris-Nice and Catalunya, which is always good," Campenaerts told Cyclingnews at the team presentation in Burgas.

"If you already have victories, it makes it more relaxed, and we just had a very good time. It often surprises me that people think it's all super serious for us, but actually, we have a lot of fun. Of course, we do all of the right things, but it doesn't mean that we cannot make a joke at the dining table.

"We've prepared this Giro very well. We did a long altitude camp together, and this is our second really important goal as a team. Of course, we first had the Monuments, which we succeeded in quite well with Wout [van Aert] winning Roubaix. I was not part of that, but this is the really important second goal of the team, and we are ready."

Campenaerts said it's a relationship that doesn't extend too much past their professional partnership as team leader and domestique, but it's clear how committed he is to the Dane's ambitions.

After all, he's spoken openly about wanting to be part of Grand Tour-winning teams when he joined the Dutch squad, and having been forced to abandon last year's Vuelta before Vingegaard's – albeit abbreviated due to protests – victory celebrations in Madrid, the team securing the pink jersey in Rome would be a first for Campenaerts.

"I would say close is relative. It's not like when we are in the off-season that we go out for dinners with our families, or we fly from Denmark to Belgium in the opposite way," he said. "But we do quite a few races together, and we have a good match with my capabilities as a domestic helping him to win races, so that's always good."

Despite racing the Giro five times previously in his career, Campenaerts was honest about not being able to offer up much in the way of advice for the Dane on his Giro debut, given his vastly different roles in those previous appearances between 2017 and 2021.

"There aren't so many secrets about it: the Giro. Yes, I did it five times, but also in none of those five times was I a GC rider or a GC domestique, so it's quite hard to give him good advice in that sense," said the 34-year-old.

"Of course, it is known that in Giro there are always some tough days with the weather predictions, but what can you do?"

Even with this being Vingegaard's first time at the Italian Grand Tour, something he described as a "dream coming true," anything but an emphatic overall victory would be a massive surprise.

But when presented with the question of "How does it feel to be the only favourite in the race?" Vingegaard did push back, not wanting to underestimate any of his would-be challengers.

"I don't think I'm the only favourite, I think there's a lot of other strong guys here that also have a chance, so I don't think that quote is correct," he said.

"Hopefully, I can do a good race for the next three weeks. Then we'll see in Rome what the result will be. At least I've now done everything I can to be as good as possible, and in my opinion, I've had quite a good preparation."

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