Dylan Groenewegen will still be the headline sprinter at Jayco-AlUla in 2024 with a seventh Tour de France appearance lined up, despite Caleb Ewan rejoining from Lotto Dstny. The pair will ride split calendars to avoid any butting of heads, with the Australian set to race the Giro and Vuelta.
Caleb Ewan’s season has got off to a rocky start with illness hampering his sprinting opportunities at the Tour Down Under after claiming the national criterium title, whereas Groenewegen perfectly opened his 2024 account with a win at the Clàssica Comunitat Valenciana on Saturday.
“I think it’s really good we have totally different programmes,” said Groenewegen to Cyclingnews from Jayco AlUla’s training camp.
“Now he [Ewan] is doing the Australian races, then he goes to the Giro so we never see each other. Hopefully, we can motivate each other with a lot of wins and put the pressure a little bit on.”
While this year’s Tour was confirmed by Jayco AlUla team manager Brent Copeland as one for Groenewegen, 2025 is still up for grabs and down to which of the two performs better.
Groenewegen missed out on a stage win at the Tour de France in 2023 for the first time since his debut at the race in 2016, prompting the Dutch sprinter to change his plan of attack in terms of this season’s scheduling.
“I think last year I did a lot of races before the Tour and maybe I lost a bit of speed in that in that month, the most important month before the Tour,” said Groenewegen.
In 2022, racing at the Critérium du Dauphiné and Tour of Slovenia preceded him taking his last victory at the French Grand Tour on stage 3 in Denmark. But Jayco-AlUla will opt for a less intense programme in May and June after Groenewegen could only manage two top-three finishes last season.
“One year before we got a victory, so that was why I did Dauphiné to get to be a bit harder also on the climbs,” said Groenewegen.
“This year, we will skip to Dauphiné to get to just have speed in a left for the sprints in the Tour.”
The Dutchman will see leadership at the Tour de France in a roster half focused on his sprints and the other on Simon Yates’ GC challenge. Groenewegen had no qualms with the dual focus, especially with it becoming the general trend in the peloton.
“A lot of teams now choose a sprinter and a climber. We do it and this year at the Tour in the summer it’s a big goal for this team to go for GC as well as the sprints,” he said. “We’ll split the team 50% for Yates and 50% for me.”
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