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.
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.”
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.
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