Kasper Asgreen looks to regain leadership at Soudal - Quick-Step for cobbled classics - "I want to be more of a real winner"

Kasper Asgreen had a difficult 2022. The Danish classics specialist couldn't continue on his streak of success, however is looking to bounce back in 2023 with a new aproach to the spring campaign.

"I want to be more of a real winner. The intention is to simply complete a full spring campaign as well as possible. In my opinion, it is not the best strategy to gamble on just a few races," Asgreen tells In De Leiderstrui. Winner of the Tour des Flandres and E3 Saxo Classic in 2021, this past season saw him as the head of the Soudal - Quick-Step classics block.

However it was not his best period. Asgreen did have a promising third place at Strade Bianche, but in the cobbles he was nowhere near his best level. In a spring filled with illnesses in the peloton he rode to 23rd and 44th respectively at the Tour des Flandres and Paris-Roubaix.

He's having some changes in his training schedule ahead of the coming months, he shares: “It has largely stayed the same. I did do a little more sprint training though. Hopefully I will benefit a lot from that."

His spring wasn't the only bad period of his season however. "After Paris-Roubaix I started training very hard with a view to the Tour. In the Tour of Suisse, however, I crashed out and had to rehabilitate considerably," he explains. However with a Grand Depart in his country of Denmark he was selected to the lineup, but abandoned the race after eight stages. His season ended in mid-July.

"My body was pretty screwed up because of that. The Tour is then too tough a race to make your comeback at a high level. All in all, it was an accumulation of both stress factors and physical complaints that had exhausted my body even further," the 27-year old explains.

"We tried to let my body recover as well as possible after the Tour, hoping to be able to start at the World Championships. Unfortunately that did not work out. At one point we did see some improvement, but by then it was already too late. Then we decided to take a long rest period," he continued.

Several months after, Asgreen resumed his training and preparation for the 2023 season. Alongside Julian Alaphilippe, Florian Sénéchal and Yves Lampaert the team look to return to a position of great success in the cobbles as it used to.

It won't be easy however as every year the competition gets tougher. Jumbo-Visma are the prime example, having reinforced their lineup with Paris-Roubaix winner Dylan van Baarle.

On Wout van Aert and Mathieu van der Poel, Asgreen commented: "It's almost impossible to compare yourself to those two. They are almost always in the finals. Moreover, they perform very consistently, much more consistently than I do. But if I'm in a final, I think I can beat them."

Asgreen will soon start his season, and goes through his sprint calendar: "I will start at the end of January with five one-day races in Mallorca. The team has not started there before, but I think it will be great fun... The races in Mallorca are combined with a training camp," he explains. 

"Then I ride the Volta ao Algarve, followed by both races in the opening weekend. Then I try to start in as many important classics as possible. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to Paris-Nice or Tirreno-Adriatico. After the classics I prepare an intensive summer block. The Tour de France and the World Championships, which are very close to each other, play a central role in this," he concluded.