19 July, 2024
United in Pursuit of a Dream
The Tour comes to an end. The 18th stage has just finished in Barcelonette and Victor Campenaerts cries. He cries inconsolably as soon as he crosses the finish line; the long-cherished dream of the veteran cyclist has finally come true. He cries during the interview, barely able to articulate a word. He cries on the podium; he just can’t stop.
Amidst all this weeping, his eyes meet those of his entire team. Everyone is there: his teammates, those seven friends, his brothers; but also the mechanics, directors, assistants and sponsors. He feels deeply grateful and Victor starts crying again.
This victory is not his alone. He realizes that with this team, –almost– anyone could actually win.
Just a few days left to finish the Tour, a strange one which will not end in Paris and has little left for the sprinters.
Victories are hard to get, the tension is high and very few teams can win.Today, one of the last bullets was fired. Victor had put his eyes on the 18th stage months ago; all the Lotto Dstny’s energy was focused on one man today. A little further south, in Mallabia, Orbea was also working with one eye on France.
After many attacks and counterattacks, only three men remained. Just Vercher and Campenaerts would follow the attack of a great, always fantastic, Kwiatkowski. In Mallabia, no one was working anymore; they couldn’t stop watching.
Because Campenaerts was one of the first to test this OOLab Orca Aero, which gave him the victory today. The Orbea innovation team tested with the rider all those concepts that emerged in OOLab: Orbea’s ideas and creativity lab, which imagines future solutions outside the standard product development cycle.
It has been a long time imagining, working in the shadows to find solutions, some already applied to models on the market, others still in the air, still secret. There have been many hours of conversation between Campenaerts and Arizaga (Product Manager at Orbea), Costales (Orbea Sponsoring), and Maes (Performance Manager at Lotto) to get to the Orca Aero that has won a Tour de France stage today.
It has been a long and tough year, but it has been a wonderful one too. Because today is just a bright moment within the great project that has united Orbea and Lotto Dstny, two groups of people with a great future together.
And this is why we also cry; we know this is our victory in the legs of Victor Campenaerts; this victory belongs to Orbea, to Lotto-Dstny, to all the riders and staff, to the good atmosphere within this legendary team. The victory belongs to all of us who still cry now, when, hours later, we can barely believe that our passion for our work has made this dream come true.
The Lotto Dstny rider held strong in the breakaway on his special OOLab Orca Aero to the take the win.