In 2024, Dylan Groenewegen hopes to secure his return to the Tour de France as the primary sprinter for Team Jayco AlUla. However, aware of the fierce competition for positions within the team, he recognizes the crucial importance of achieving good results to reach this goal.
The sprint landscape is currently changing.
“I don’t think it has necessarily become harder to win stages. I think the sprint is evolving,” said the 30-year-old five-time Tour de France stage winner in a conversation with the Italian channel Bici.
“Nowadays, entire teams no longer ride in the service of a sprinter. Just look at my shared leadership with Simon Yates in last year’s Tour. Usually, there are now three or four cyclists in a team’s train.”
Groenewegen believes that sprint stages are more challenging than ever. “It could be that the route of the stages is different from before. The race becomes tougher due to climbs or because the peloton also makes the race harder. I think Jasper Philipsen had the best balance last summer. But I certainly had the feeling that there could have been victories for me as well.”
Relationship with Fabio Jakobsen
Two of Groenewegen’s likely rivals for sprint victories in the Tour de France will be Fabio Jakobsen and Mark Cavendish.
“He was never my friend, and he isn’t now. He is, however, a great cyclist. That’s how I see him,” says Groenewegen about Jakobsen, with whom he was involved in a serious accident in 2020.
“It was the corona period, which took a long time, I was suspended, and so I wasn’t sure about my level. Besides, my wife was pregnant, and the birth of our first child was hectic. My son Mayson was my top priority.”
Recall the serious accident involving Jakobsen.
“The best sprinter of all time”
For Cavendish, however, Groenewegen doesn’t hide his admiration. “Where hasn’t he won? He’ll do everything to break Eddy Merckx’s record,” he says about the Briton.
“He is the smartest sprinter there is and perhaps the best sprinter of all time,” concludes the Amsterdam-born Dutchman.
