‘The team is trying to push me more towards the Classics’ – Jasper Philipsen to focus less on bunch sprints in preparation for 2026 season

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’ seven UCI victories in 2025 was two fewer than his 2024 total, while in 2023 he won 19 races.

The rider born in Mol in the province of Antwerp suffered several crashes which hindered his progress this season, including his fall on stage three of the Tour which forced him to abandon with a broken collarbone. He chose to look back on his year in a positive light when asked to assess how he thought things had gone.

“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…