"From the beginning, I dreamed of reaching the podium of the Tour de France" - Mattias Skjelmose aims for Tour de France podium in 2025

The 2024 season still seems far away, but Mattias Skjelmose already knows what his program will broadly look like. The Vuelta a España will be one of the Dane's main goals. He said this in Bobby and Jens, the podcast by Jens Voigt and Bobby Julich.

"I want to do a very good Ardennes week, I especially want to improve my result in Liège-Bastogne-Liège," begins Skjelmose, who finished ninth in La Doyenne last year. Shortly before that, he also achieved good results in the Flèche Wallonne (second) and Amstel Gold Race (eighth). "After that I will go all out in the Critérium du Dauphiné and hopefully at the Olympic Games. Then the Vuelta will be a big goal, followed by the World Championships."

Skjelmose made his debut in the Tour de France last season, but will skip the Tour next year. He will return to La Grande Boucle in 2025. "That's why I'm doing the Vuelta this year. Kim came up with the master plan to ride a classification in the Vuelta, so that I have already ridden a classification in a Grand Tour before I put everything on the Tour in 2025."

Skjelmose, however, makes it clear that he will not settle for a minor role. "From the beginning, my coach and I dreamed of reaching the podium of the Tour de France, and that remains the direction I want to go," he said when asked about his ambitions for the coming years.