"It might be weird, but we both want to win" - Jasper Philipsen determined to outsprint everyone, including compatriot Tim Merlier
Cycling
Either an excellent choice or a massive tactical mistake. Belgium's selection for home European Championships was a topic to many decisions, but that changes nothing on the fact that Sven Vanthourenhout selected (at least) two spinter leaders for the race in Limburg. And it's clear that neither Tim Merlier nor Jasper Philipsen are going to work for each other, which means that in case of a bunch sprint, there'll be at the very least two light-blue sprint trains.
Philipsen confirms that none of 'I'll sacrifice for my compatriot to help his chances to win' is going to be on the menu on Sunday. The two speedsters are bound by deep rivalry that dates back to their time together at Alpecin-Deceuninck and to top the other in such big race is a massive motivation for the two. "It might be weird that there will be two sprint trains, but we both want to win. It may be that we will sprint against each other, and I think that is more than logical," Philipsen told HLN in a down-to-earth tone.
Two light blues in a sprint against each other? Is that possible with strong men like Olav Kooij and Jonathan Milan at the start? "I think both Jasper and I will have a sprint train. I'm a different sprinter than him. We won't hinder each other, but we both want the jersey. Then, if Milan wins, he will be the fastest. There will always be some criticism. I think the national coach should get praise. He has shown balls by taking us with him," Merlier said.
"If a Belgian wins, that will indeed be the conclusion. If no Belgian wins, there will be criticism about the selection. We'll both get our chance if it comes to a sprint," Philipsen stressed. "We can sprint with two next to each other. With six is also an option," jokes the Alpecin-Deceuninck man, who won three Tour stages this year.
Read also
Just in
Subscribe to our Daily Newsletter today!
Popular news
Latest comments
- There is a cyclist, recently retired who raced as a Junior in 1997, and is known as 'The Goat'. Downhill legend, Greg Minnaar......wipperman9530-12-2024
- The road bias of this site shows up as PFP isn't mentioned - who is as successful as Vos, and from memory has more World titles.wipperman9530-12-2024
- his wife was surprisingly accurateabstractengineer30-12-2024
- Its the wrong thing to do the Vuelta after getting exhausted in the TDF. This is going to reduce his career potentialabstractengineer30-12-2024
- And you missed that I wasn’t contradicting but enhancing or adding to the discussion :-) I am surprised MJ made it that far without some of this having been picked up earlier. To further make my point, yes, by all means correct/improve anything that you can later in life but like disease, think of prevention before asking for cures, even in cycling a lot is crucial at the early stages but unfortunately, unlike athletics, cycling is a sport that rarely takes (youth) coaching seriously, if at all, it’s basically each to himself and we’ll pick the better ones once there’s enough development. About the only thing young cyclists get forced to learn is to ride with high cadence and that isn’t even coach induced but almost institutionalised. And as I tried to imply, no matter how much you perfect technique, we are all absolutely unique in our mechanical motions, you just have to watch the posture and strides of runners to note how dissimilar each is, and a crucial point to always remember is that by trying to force a better technique you may gain something somewhere but lose more elsewhere, you have to know whether it leaves you « comfortably within your natural boundaries « , eg, no point to improve your saddle position for more aerodynamicity if you’re going to have to ride uncomfortably for hours coz your mental state will drag more on your performance than your aerodynamics gain.Mistermaumau30-12-2024
- this isn’t really a discussion about cycling anymore, but that’s cool. so, i live in the united states. there are a lot of things that i don’t like about the way things work or fail to work here, especially compared to many other developed democracies. but one thing the united states does do well is it secures an extraordinarily high level of free speech. now, am i disgusted by the likes of alex jones and how he USES that freedom of speech? you bet. and there are infinite examples of people saying things i’m disgusted and outraged by. but unless someone is going to hand over control to censorOCexile30-12-2024
- I feel you missed my point - those who can be coached and can change can improve with new insights. And it helps to have people who see what needs to change to move that along. I’m focusing on the biomechanical expert in the article, without whom Jorgensen wouldn’t have improved. Context matters.RidesHills30-12-2024
- Yes, but also what eyes can’t do. I was an athletics coach for kids for years and you can see and try to correct as many faults as there are but some requirements are just not possible. It’s very hard to visualize but we all know from experiences, in sport, the most obvious one is the swimming conundrum, you can never become a top level swimmer unless your body grew into it young, maybe gymnastics would be similar. And outside sport, it’s as easy as learning to twitch your ear, if you can ;-)Mistermaumau30-12-2024
- Look, I respect your view but you need to question them out of principle too so I’m going to ask you to ask yourself the same question as someone else, should a living Adolf have been given a platform for discussing war tactics? Should Alex Jones have been allowed to continue his Sandy Hook accusations? Somewhere along a scale society has to draw lines, individuals in their head don’t but the internet is open, it’s society, those who want to exchange non-compatible societal IDEAS can still do so, in private amongst themselves but not market them publicly. Besides wasn’t it part of the deal he was not to be involved in cycling? A public show about cycling seems to fly in the face of that but I guess as so often, it was a poorly worded « contract » and with a lack of morals, limits were bound to be tested, again ;-)Mistermaumau30-12-2024
- Well, perhaps we still consider sport* to be more of a men’s thing? * I have to say that watching my partner at her badminton club that seems to be one of the rare sports where a more balanced attitude is ambivalent, perhaps because most prefer to play mixed doubles at that level and it’s a very social sport at club level and each match type has equal weighting towards a tournament total?Mistermaumau30-12-2024