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Follow us on Google“Every morning you wake up expecting to feel better, but at some point you start to think: it’s never going to get better.” Those are the words of Christophe Laporte, who spent almost the entire 2025 season on the sidelines with cytomegalovirus. The Frenchman, one of the outsiders for Friday’s E3 Saxo Classic, reflected in detail on that difficult period ahead of the Flemish cycling week.
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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.
Continue reading below the photo!
Laporte won Paris-Tours in late 2024.
Laporte spent a long time battling the virus
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.”
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Christophe Laporte missed much of 2025.
What exactly is cytomegalovirus?
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.”
Continue reading below the photo!
Laporte wants to win a Classic
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.”
Tom van der Salm (27) comes from the charming town of Zeilberg (Deurne) in the Netherlands and has been working as editor-in-chief & journalist at IDL Pro Cycling's parent site, In de Leiderstrui, since 2019. He travels with the peloton from the Tour de France to the AlUla Tour and from the World Championships in Rwanda or Canada to the Zilvermeercross in Mol. In his spare time he enjoys playing football, mountain biking, running, walking with his Labrador/Stabyhoun, investing, holidays, (specialty) beers, reading, cooking and watching sports & documentaries!
Contact: [email protected]
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