Alpecin-Deceuninck is encouraging star sprinter Jasper Philipsen to focus more on the Classics for 2026 as the Belgian team looks to build on the success they have enjoyed during the spring in recent years.
27-year-old Philipsen is a former victor of Milano-Sanremo and has twice finished on the podium of Paris-Roubaix. He has formed half of a high-performing Classics duo in recent seasons with Mathieu van der Poel, an eight-time Monument winner.
Up to now, however, the 2023 Tour de France green jersey victor has played that Classics role as a side project to his occupation as one of the world’s best sprinters. As he prepares for the 2026 season, Philipsen is being nudged to focus more on the Classics as a primary goal by his team.
“The team is trying to push me more towards the Classics, especially at the start of the season,” Philipsen told tuttobiciweb.
“This obviously makes me focus less on pure sprints, but it's not a problem. Being able to compete for the win in races I dream of, like Roubaix, is something really nice and makes it easier to focus on those types of events.”
Once the Hell of the North is completed in mid-April, Philipsen’s eyes will circle back to the fast finishes and another stab at the Tour de France, where he is a ten-time stage winner. He will pivot his training to be able to contend for sprints throughout the three-week race, saying that he will need to “have a strong engine and a very solid base level to be fast and competitive even in the third week.”
Although he took stages at both the Tour de France and Vuelta a España this season, as well as victory at Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne in February, 2025 was Philipsen’s leanest year in terms of his total number of victories since the COVID-impacted 2020 season.
Philipsen’s seven UCI victories in 2025 were two fewer than his 2024 total, while in 2023 he won 19 races.
“I think that when evaluating a season, it's not just the number of victories achieved that counts,” he said. “There have been years where, for example, I've won more but the quality of the successes has been lower, so personally, I'm very happy to have managed to wear both the yellow jersey at the Tour and the red one at the Vuelta in the last few months; I think that's something special within a single season.”
“That said, it's definitely been a difficult year for me. I had two bad crashes at the wrong times, moments when I was in great shape after preparing for a long time to pursue important goals, and I didn't have much time to recover from them. This certainly had a big impact both immediately and on my season as a whole, but I can't do anything about it; that's just the way it went.”
Philipsen’s 2026 schedule will take a similar form to recent seasons, with his goals being the Classics and then the Tour de France, but having won stages at both the Tour and Vuelta a España in his career, he would like to adapt his calendar in the future to be able to ride the Giro d’Italia.
“It would be great to participate in the Corsa Rosa, but personally, I find its placement on the calendar a bit complicated for me because it falls halfway between the demanding Classics period, which is a very important goal for our team, and an equally important event for us like the Tour de France,” he said.
“We'll see in the future how to fit it into my plans because, one thing's for sure, sooner or later I want to go to the Giro.”
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