From third in Omloop Het Nieuwsblad to first in Kuurne-Brussel-Kuurne: Jasper Philipsen captured identical results to Wout van Aert in last year's Opening Weekend, going from questioning whether he'd forgotten how to sprint after Saturday's defeat to a resounding answer with a fine dash for victory on Sunday.
After placing 94th last year in a race which has never favoured him in the past, the fastman had already shown on Saturday on the hills and cobbles of Omloop that his climbing and all around Classic aptitude was very much in top shape. All that was lacking after he and his team turned in a sterling performance all the way to the final kilometres of Nieuwsblad was the victory itself.
But after near misses in UAE and then again in Omloop on Saturday, 24 hours later, courtesy of a sterling leadout train including Australian Kaden Groves - later disqualified from his tenth spot for celebrating Philipsen's win - the Belgian was able to celebrate his first success of 2025. In the process and even if Milan-San Remo is still three weeks away, the Alpecin-Deceuninck racer has also made a very timely statement, too, about his intentions for a title defence of the fast-approaching Primavera.
"I tried to stay focus and go for the win, visualizing a little bit, but of course it' it's difficult for our opponents to beat when you have a team and support like this from guys like Jonas [Rickaert] and Kaden…it was a perfect leadout," he said in his winner's press conference on one side of the Ninove press room.
"Yesterday [Saturday] I felt a bit stronger on the climbs to be honest but it was clear it was going to be a bunch sprint, there were no big splits. I tried to focus pretty quickly on the sprint [on Sunday] and also the legs weren't the best any more, but nobody had good legs after a hard day like this."
"We just needed to have the confidence on the flat part that we could do something in the last kilometre."
There has been a lot of talk about the collective strength of UAE Team Emirates-XRG and Visma-Lease a Bike and while both squads did their utmost to shape the race in their favour, neither fully succeeded. Alpecin-Deceuninck, on the other hand, have upped their game considerably in dominating the Opening Weekend, one journalist suggested to Philipsen.
"I think we took a really good step since last year, we weren't successful yet in Opening Weekend, we always had our best shape later," he confirmed.
"I just hope we can continue to keep this shape and not go downwards, because it's still a long way into the Classics. We changed a little bit in our preparation and I could feel the team was there, that also gives confidence for the next races, I hope this continues."
"It's also clear that UAE and Visma were not as aggressive as we've seen in the last year. Of course they were there, but not better than the others."
The change in his own preparation, he said, was not to have Opening Weekend as his first races of the season, starting with another event like the UAE Tour before coming to Belgium. The effects of this switch were notable, too, with his best ever result in Omloop to date on Saturday, jumping from 66th in 2024 to third in 2025, and then his victory on Sunday, with no less a figure than team leader and Classics star Mathieu van der Poel, he said, being instrumental in maintaining his discipline in winter training too.
"Of course UAE was not the hardest race, but we had some racing feeling in the last couple of kilometres and maybe that helped as well."
Altitude training in Spain, too, with Van der Poel also helped a lot. "He really pushed me this winter," Philipsen confirmed, "he stayed nearby and we spent a lot of hours together training."
"I think I've never trained as hard as I did this winter because he was always pushing me, [telling me to be] on time at 10 o'clock - 'Be there and don't be two minutes late'. Always doing extra kilometres."
"I need people to motivate me and it was nice to prepare with him. We did some really good training."
Philipsen will return to altitude training, he confirmed, "because last year we did Tirreno to make that extra step. But maybe it can be overkill with doing that race, we have to find a good balance between training and racing. I'm fully confident with what the performance team is doing so hopefully it's the right choice, but for sure it'll always be a risk."
Rather than head straight to Milan-San Remo, though, he'll do Nokere Koerse in Belgium on the preceding Wednesday, "because I'm normally not that good when I come straight down from altitude. We will have to see and experience it."
At a race like Omloop and above all Kuurne, Philipsen was able to reap the benefits of all that hard work, with a triumph which both eases the pressure on the squad but also confirms he is in top form for the spring.
"It was always the plan to do Opening Weekend, I think so far we are on schedule and things are going like expected in terms of preparation. So hopefully we can keep this momentum going because there's still a long way to go in the Classics."
At the moment in any case, although he did not classify Kuurne as a 'normal sprint', coming after such a difficult Classic, it appears that he has found the perfect balance between speed and power to race very well in the toughest of one-day races.
"Today was not a classic sprint, nobody really had the legs any more it was a really hard legs, nobody's freshest legs were there. Yesterday was a good chance so I missed some extra balance, it's always a difficult balance between speed and being strong."
"But this one is a really nice one to win, Opening Weekend for a Belgian guy is very special. I'm very happy to have this and we can go to the next races with an open mind."
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