Philipsen: Alpecin-Deceuninck 'is trying to push me more towards the Classics'
Jasper Philipsen has told TuttoBiciWeb that his Alpecin-Deceuninck team plans to rely on him even more heavily in the Classics next season. The 27-year-old Belgian, who won Milan-San Remo in 2024 and has twice finished on the podium at Paris-Roubaix, seems happy to focus even more on races where he already features heavily for his team in conjunction with superstar leader Mathieu van der Poel.
"The team is trying to push me more towards the Classics, especially at the beginning of the season, and this obviously means that I focus less on pure sprints, but that’s not a problem," said Philipsen, who also counts 10 Tour de France stage wins and a green jersey on his career palmares. "Being able to compete for victory in races I dream of, such as Roubaix, is something very beautiful that makes it easy to focus on that type of event."
That said, he still expects to be fighting for sprint wins in the Tour de France.
"In the second half of the season, however, things change because the goal is always the Tour," he said. "It’s a demanding race where you need to have a very solid engine and base level to be fast and competitive even in the third week." [TuttoBiciWeb]
