Jasper Philipsen says Alpecin Deceuninck will be well-prepared for next season’s Spring Classic after the team’s dominant start to the season last time out in response to the most popular tags.
Belgium won all three opening monuments through Mathieu van der Poel and Phillipson himself. Van der Poel won Paris-Roubaix for the second time after winning the Tour of Flanders again on the fourth race day of the season. Phillipson, meanwhile, kicked off a promising start to the season with a win at Milan-Sanremo.
Phillipson gradually began to build an identity for himself as more than just a sprinter. His second consecutive second place finish behind his team-mate at Roubaix only furthered this story.
talking Cycling Weekly Speaking at a winter training camp in Alpecin-Deceuninck, Spain, Philipson said the Classics were starting to be as important to him personally as the Tour de France and had his sights set on the green sprinter jersey.
“During the season we are now focusing more on my classic matches and training regularly for those specific races,” he explained. “After going to the Tour de France I’ll try to improve more in the sprints and focus on that, but I think everything we did last year went well so we’ll try to do more or less the same thing for me , and try the spring campaign with success.
“I will always be a sprinter and sprinting will be my strength, but it won’t be my main focus in the first half of the year.”
“We’re still working out the details of my plans but there won’t be a Tour Down Under or anything like that,” he added. “Last year went really well, so we didn’t have to adapt to a lot. We’ll change my training after the classics and start adjusting for the sprints again, but it’s more or less a similar approach.”
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“I’m very happy with how this is going,” he explained, looking back on 2024. “Doing what we do [at Paris-Roubaix] Two years in a row is really special. All eyes will be on us next year, but we’ll be ready.
“It would be great if we can win again in Roubaix, but if I do well and maybe win another classic I’ll be happy. It’s hard to target one classic specifically because it means you It really needs to be 100% perfect, and a lot of situations can get in the way.”
Philipson joked that it was a relief to be in Denia on the Costa Blanca again after the harsh winter weather began to hit his hometown in Belgium. The 26-year-old spends a lot of time training on Zwift but is delighted to have the chance to hit the road again with his teammates in southern Spain.
“It’s been a little bit of an evolution coming here,” he said. “I think one team started the sport and then other teams followed and then the whole team came here. Every year you see more and more people coming here and you see more and more people coming here. More and more amateurs and young riders are coming and some are here for a few months now to prepare for the new season.”
“In Belgium it rains all the time, so I usually just use Zwift,” he added. “I also use it if the ride is shorter and I don’t want to be out on the road. I don’t really like to just train on the rollers, so this helps make it more interactive and more fun. A Cool choice.”
