Alpecin-Deceuninck are the first team to announce their full roster of 30 riders for the 2024 season, with three new signings and four riders stepping up from the development squad to WorldTour level.
The seven new riders include U23 road race World Champion Axel Laurance, 2022 Zwift Academy winner Luca Vergallito, Henri Uhlig, Timo Kielich, Stan Van Tricht, Lars Boven and Juri Hollmann, with the latter three all signed from other WorldTour teams.
In just their first season as a WorldTour team, the Belgian side have been quite brilliant, taking the majority of their 34 victories through Classics superstar Mathieu van der Poel, versatile sprinter Kaden Groves and the best sprinter in the world, Jasper Philipsen.
Through 2024 the vision for team managers Christoph and Philip Roodhooft is again to target Monuments as the team won two in 2023 through Van der Poel at Milan Sanremo and Paris-Roubaix, alongside the World Championships road race.
When asked what the goal was for 2024 by Het Laatste Nieuws at the Kristallen Fiets, Christoph Roodhooft responded: “That Mathieu van der Poel wins the Tour of Flanders and Jasper Philipsen Paris-Roubaix”.
The pair of riders were first and second at Paris-Roubaix this year. Van der Poel was unable to stay with Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates) and fight for a third Tour of Flanders victory, so you can expect the Dutchman to be hungrier than ever to regain his crowd at De Ronde.
At the Kristallen Fiets, the Roodhooft brothers were again recognised jointly as the ‘Best Manager’ for the second time in their careers, but were not completely in favour of the awards given out that night, stating that they believed Philipsen could have beat Recmo Evenepoel to the Crystal Bike award for best male rider in 2023.
“I honestly think Jasper [Philipsen] deserved it. For me personally anyway. I would have voted for him,” said Christoph. “His victories do not necessarily carry more weight, but my choice would have been him.”
“Jasper Philipsen has achieved all his objectives this year. That is not the case with Remco,” said Philip Roodhooft in agreement with his brother. “That does not mean that Remco’s performance is not impressive. Only one can win.”
Philipsen has been prolific in 2023, not only taking the most stage wins at the Tour de France with four but also confirming Wednesday that he would be the winningest rider of the season after claiming his 18th victory at the Tour of Turkey.
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