Jasper Philipsen remains cautious despite yellow jersey ambitions: "We don't want to risk it all for this one stage"

Since the 2025 Tour de France route was announced two weeks ago, much talk has been about the opening flat stage in Lille. This will be a perfect chance for one of the sprinters to claim the yellow jersey, an opportunity that is rarely presented to them.

Speaking to Cyclingnews, Philipsen, who has 9 Tour de France stage wins to his name, discussed his chances of wearing the yellow jersey. “I think this is a really nice opportunity as a sprinter so yeah, we try to go for it as well, but I think we don't want to risk it all for this one stage.

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“Stage wins will for sure be the goal, and everybody is targeting that first one, so of course I will also target it but if it's not playing out well we have other stages coming up.”

Philipsen enjoyed a stellar spring classics season in 2024, winning his first monument at Milan San-Remo and then joining his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Mathieu van der Poel on the podium at Paris-Roubaix. But, it did take the 26 year old Belgian some time to get going at the Tour, and he eventually was beaten by Biniam Girmay to the green jersey.

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"I think next year that there's a lot of opportunities for us in the first 10 days of the Tour of France so we have to make sure we are there immediately in our top condition from stage one.

"This year, I had to take some time to get in better condition. So we have to look into it in detail and try to learn from the previous years."