Wednesday April 3, 2024 at 6:22 PM
Video Jasper Philipsen was unable to succeed himself in the Scheldeprijs. The top favorite was not ideally placed in the sprint, had to come from too far and recognized his superiority in his ex-teammate Tim Merlier. “Maybe I should have been a little more aggressive,” the runner-up said afterwards in the flash interview.
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Alpecin-Deceuninck, Philipsen’s team, seemed to emerge at the right time in the final. With 1.5 kilometers to go, the sprint train was brought into position. “But just at the end we lost each other,” Philipsen looks back on the hectic last kilometer. “So I became a bit trapped and couldn’t choose the right wheel.”
Philipsen came up in the last meters, but ultimately did not really come close to Merlier. Second, can the winner of Milan-San Remo live with that? “I am satisfied with the feeling and that I stayed straight, but of course I would have preferred to win.”
The ‘Flame of Ham’ is disappointed that he couldn’t really complete his sprint. “Although I didn’t feel like making a big deal about Sunday,” Philipsen said, referring to Paris-Roubaix, where he will start as one of the favorites. “Maybe I should have been a little more aggressive, but it’s still a nice sprint. I will definitely come back to win this competition in the coming years.”
