"Danny is a good pilot who I will miss": Jordi Meeus prepares for a new-look sprint train at Red Bull-BORA

Jordi Meeus enjoyed in 2025 his most successful season to date in terms of victories, claiming two wins at the World Tour level (a Tour de Suisse stage and the Copenhagen Sprint), the third stage of the Volta ao Algarve and the Binche-Chimay-Binche. A great year that would have been perfect for him if he had won stage 17 of the Tour de France.

“Normally I can put something like that behind me quite quickly,” Meeus said in an interview to Sporza. “But now it could have been an extra stage win in the biggest race in the world.”

It is almost 2026, but Meeus still feels gutted about that painful near-miss. “If I turn that second place in the Tour sprint into a victory, then I can speak of a great season. Now it is still a painful moment. I should really have won that stage. It was purely down to my timing. In the final kilometre I no longer saw the signs for the last metres, so I waited too long to launch my sprint.”

The Red Bull - BORA - hansgrohe squad for the Tour de France is not defined yet, but Meeus is on the longlist. He will have to wait to know if he will participate in the Grande Boucle for the third time in his career, which is his main goal for the season.

“I certainly have the ambition to go back to the Tour,” he said. He also expressed regret over the absence of a traditional sprint finish in Paris. “I personally find it a shame that for the third year in a row there is no sprinters’ festival planned on the Champs-Élysées.”

“I think all sprinters regret that,” said Meeus, who remains the last winner on the Champs-Élysées, having triumphed there in 2023. “With the Champs-Élysées on the final day, the fast men have a nice goal to cling on to during the hard final week. Now it makes it a bit less interesting.”

If selected, Meeus will likely race the Tour without Danny van Poppel. Van Poppel is set to focus on his own sprint ambitions this year and is targeting the Giro d’Italia. The team already announced Meeus and Van Poppel will split the calendar, so they will most likely not coincide in any races.

“Danny is indeed a good pilot who I will miss. We are trying to fill that gap somewhat with newcomers like Arne Marit and Jarrad Drizners. I think the disadvantage might still be manageable.”

However, he did not rule out a future reunion, depending on how the 2026 season goes. “Danny can now try for wins for half a year. If that works, he will continue. If it doesn’t go so well, he won’t mind doing lead-outs again.”

Beyond the sprints, Meeus is also setting his sights on the classics. “If I can draw up a wish list for the new year, then a victory in the opening weekend is right at the top.”

That was the objective last year as well, but Meeus decided to drop from the favourites’ group at the Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to save himself for Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. “I must admit that I did not rewatch the race on the team bus with the best feeling, when it turned into a sprint,” he said. “But we made a plan quite early to approach the race like that, and we stuck to it.”

Paris-Roubaix is also one of the main goals. “Two seasons ago I finished eighth there. It is certainly the intention to perform just as well again this year. Classics like E3 Harelbeke and the Tour of Flanders are really too heavy for me, but Paris-Roubaix suits me well and is high on my list for 2026,” he concluded.