Christophe Laporte, 12 months later: “I couldn’t even manage a 20-minute walk”

Laporte joined the Dutch squad from Cofidis in the winter of 2021/22 and immediately developed into a key figure in the spring Classics and the Tour de France. In 2022, he finished runner-up in both E3 Saxo Classic and Gent-Wevelgem, before going one better a year later with victories in Gent-Wevelgem and Dwars door Vlaanderen.

He also won a Tour de France stage in 2022 and became European champion in 2023, establishing himself as one of the world’s top Classics riders. Unfortunately for Laporte and his team, that level did not fully come to the surface in 2024 and 2025. In 2024, he struggled through the spring with a saddle injury and illness, although he still managed to take Olympic bronze later that year and win Paris-Tours.

He had hoped to carry those strong legs into the 2025 Classics campaign, but shortly after the winter he began to feel unwell. His altitude training camp had to be cut short, and in the end he would spend more than ten months out with a relatively unknown virus: cytomegalovirus, which causes few or no symptoms in many people.

But not for Laporte. “It was the toughest period of my career,” he explained. “When I look back to a year ago now, I had already been ill for more than a month and I felt really bad. I couldn’t even manage a 20-minute walk outside without feeling unwell afterwards.”

“I was basically on the couch all day, doing nothing,” the 33-year-old Frenchman continued. “Because I simply couldn’t do much, not even with my children. And that also makes it very difficult to enjoy the time you have at home. I constantly had headaches, I felt extremely tired... it was not an easy period.”

Laporte also tried to explain what the virus did to him. “I felt a bit sick for a week and then we thought: hmm, this is lasting quite a long time for a ‘normal’ cold or something similar. So we did a blood test and that showed I had the virus in my system. It’s from the same family as glandular fever.”

“You have the virus in your body and I don’t know what it does to other people, but it made me feel really awful,” he said. “In general, I just felt very bad, but we stayed optimistic. One month, maybe a bit more... but it turned into much more than that. We kept planning possible comebacks, but at a certain point we decided to focus on getting fit first and only then start thinking about cycling again.”

In the end, Laporte returned in the second half of August and still managed to deliver results in 2025, winning the Tour of Holland and finishing second in Paris-Tours. “But I was already happy that I was even able to race again last year. A few months earlier, I really could not have imagined that.”

In 2026, he has already shown strong form, taking victory at the Ruta del Sol and playing a crucial role during Opening Weekend with fourth place in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the lead-out for Matthew Brennan in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. “I’ve had a good winter and I feel completely fine again, especially when I compare it to last year.”

And that bodes well for the rest of the Classics campaign. “My goal is to win a Classic this spring, but the Classics remain a special kind of racing. Still, I’m convinced I have the legs to win one.”