After crashing heavily out of the Tour de France on stage 3, Jasper Philipsen will have a second shot at Grand Tour racing and a leader's jersey in 2025 as he leads Alpecin-Deceuninck at the Vuelta a España.
Philipsen is the best pure sprinter on the Vuelta start list, but he'll face stiff competition from an in-form Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek), who dominated his return race in Denmark, with other fast men such as Ethan Vernon (Israel-Premier Tech) and Casper van Uden (Picnic PostNL) also lining out in Turin on Saturday.
The Belgian sprinter only returned to racing at last week's Tour of Denmark after his collarbone fracture but is convinced his form is on the right trajectory.
"Denmark will determine my future programme. I'd love to ride the Vuelta; it's one of the few major goals I still have this fall. I'm really motivated to be there, but with my limited preparation, we also have to see what's realistic," Philipsen told Nieuwsblad last week.
"If I ride around here in Denmark feeling bad for a week, it might not be wise to suffer for three weeks in the mountains during a tough Vuelta. We'll have to see."
Philipsen didn't manage a stage win in Denmark, he only cracked the top 40 on one stage, but he must have seen enough to believe he can compete at the Vuelta. His fourth-place finish at the Cyclassics Hamburg on Sunday was a final confirmation his form and sprinting speed is coming back.
With Alpecin-Deceuninck having their star sprinter available, the team "line up with one clear goal: stage wins, just as we’ve done in most previous Grand Tours we started."
Philipsen doesn't have the star-studded lead-out of Mathieu van der Poel and Kaden Groves that delivered him to victory on the opening stage of the Tour, but he is afforded the luxury of Jonas Rickaert's and Edward Planckaert's experience in the train.
In typical Vuelta a España fashion, there isn't a wealth of flat sprint chances, but stage 1 from Turin to Novara offers Philipsen the opportunity to take the first red jersey and kick off his return to Grand Tour racing with a bang.
There are only three more designated flat stages according to the Vuelta's official route – on stages 8, 19 and 21 in Madrid, but flat stages in Spain are never that simple.
That isn't to say Philipsen, a Milan-San Remo winner, isn't capable of racing with more versatility, so if he can rediscover a high levelof form, he's more than capable of adding more Vuelta stages to his palmares.
The Vuelta remains an important race for Philipsen, having scored his first Grand Tour stage win at the Spanish race in 2020, while racing for UAE Team Emirates. He returned to the Vuelta with Alpecin a year later and took two more stage wins.
It's the first time he's returned to the race since he abandoned the 2021 edition before stage 11, having focused only on the Tour de France in the past four seasons, and subsequent victories would bring his career Grand Tour stage win tally to 14 and beyond.
Aside from his sprint lead-out, Philipsen is joined on the start line by Luca Vergallito, Tobias Bayer, Gal Glivar, Ramses Debruyne and Oscar Riesebeek. Alpecin-Deceuninck have taken four Grand Tour stage wins so far in 2025.
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