Kevin Vermaerke

Into his fourth year with the team, Kevin has grown as a rider and person each season and 2022 saw the young American pick up some solid results throughout the campaign and make his debut at the Tour de France. Yet, that season was also blighted by bad luck with illness and injury which unfortunately saw him abandon his Tour debut. It was a tough pill to swallow for Kevin but he took a positive approach out of it.

“To have that opportunity in the first place and to be there and be in the race, not struggling at the back, was really cool. I felt super confident in my shape, and we were doing well as a team, and I got a lot of positive reinforcement from the guys. When I was in the hospital, all I could think about was how I was going to make sure I can go back to the race in the future.”

Fast forward to 2023 and Kevin was lining up Bilbao for his second Tour, this time completing the trip and impressing many with his fighting spirit and displays in the final week. Carrying that form, the good results flowed with Kevin taking third overall at the Arctic Race of Norway and sixth on GC at the Deutschland Tour; a base to build on for the future.

From cycling blood, Kevin’s dad was a cyclist who competed on the road and track for Belgium, winning a silver medal at the junior world championships in the latter. Yet, he was never “forced into cycling”, previously playing a lot of baseball and football before he started doing some local mountain bike races at the age of 13. He then got his first road bike when he was 15, and at 16 he eventually stopped playing football and made the switch completely to cycling.

“From the start I knew I wanted to be a pro, even though I didn’t know what that really meant. I enjoy training and racing and wanted to do that every day, it’s something that I’ve grown up doing and I never pictured myself doing anything else.”

Of course, Kevin jokes that sometimes when the weather is bad or he has a tough training session ahead of him then it is a little bit harder to go out training, but “it’s also crazy that I can make a living from doing what I love and riding cool races.”

Open and talkative, Kevin wears his heart on his sleeve and describes himself as “honest, loyal and focused”, all of which he thinks are characteristics that help him as a rider and with the team-aspect side of the sport.

“We all know how much of a team sport cycling is, I think there is a lot of unspoken trust you must have in the guys and the team. You need to be on the same page so that you know you will be there for each other – that’s the key.”

Away from cycling Kevin enjoys watching lots of other sports such as MotoGP which he used to watch with his dad, who loved the sport, with Valentino Rossi one of his sporting idols. Some of Kevin’s earliest memories are being sat together watching the racing alongside his dad.

When he’s not watching sport then Kevin likes to listen to a variety of music such as EDM or rap, or getting his nose stuck into the latest book with his hidden talent being that he is a “pretty fast reader”. Interestingly, Kevin has also held three passports for most of his life – South Africa, Belgium and the USA, having been born in Johannesburg (South Africa) before moving to California (USA) at a young age, although now he just has two to his name!