A week in the life of Yves Lampaert

During the pandemic, the Belgian cobblestone specialist divides his time between working on the farm, training and conquering the AoE ll universe.

I’m sure I am not the first rider to tell you this, but it’s really weird not having any races. The last time I pinned on a number was for stage 7 of Paris-Nice and that feels like it was ages ago. Ok, we now have a calendar, we know what to aim for, and that’s really encouraging, but when you think about it, it’s still a long way to go until August, when racing will finally resume.

On the other hand, I can’t complain about not having anything to do. Two days per week I work on the tractor at my parents’ farm. I do a lot of ploughing to get the field ready for sowing. We grow cauliflower, potato, leek, zucchini, so there’s plenty to do, as you can imagine, but I love every single second spent there, it’s very relaxing and reinvigorating, at the same time.

It goes without saying, I don’t neglect training, I still get in a lot of kilometers. For example, just the other day I covered 200 kilometers with my Deceuninck – Quick-Step teammate Bert Van Lerberghe and it was really great to ride and get that feeling again, which we miss so much. I also train together with my girlfriend, Astrid; I recently bought her a new Specialized and we like to go out for a nice ride at least once per week.

When it comes to relaxing in the evening, I’m either on Netflix or on my laptop, playing. I’m watching now “The Last Dance” and it’s absolutely gripping. I like to watch sports documentary and this may be the best I’ve ever seen, it’s stunning. I find it fascinating to discover so many unknown details about one of the greatest athletes of all time. Concerning playing, I am still going strong on Age of Empires ll. At the moment, I have two favourite civilizations, the Vietnamese and the Spanish, and it’s them I use to challenge Tim Declercq.

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