Philipsen finally off the mark at Nokere Koerse despite mid-race shoe change chaos
Jasper Philipsen finally opened his 2026 account at Nokere Koerse, overcoming a mid-race shoe change and a chaotic finale to take victory. The Alpecin-Premier Tech sprinter had to dig deep after an energy-sapping return to the peloton, but still proved the fastest in a disrupted sprint.
It was not a straightforward win. Philipsen came close to crashing midway through the race and was forced to unclip abruptly to stay upright, damaging his shoe in the process.
“I was almost down and had to use my entire cleat to stay on the bike. My shoe was broken,” he explained afterwards.
A replacement followed, though not without consequence. Philipsen returned to the bunch having already burned through valuable energy, and with an unusual mismatch in footwear, crossing the line later with one silver and one white shoe.
“It doesn’t look great,” he said to Sporza. “But it was effective. Maybe it even brought me some luck.”
The effort to get back into contention nearly proved decisive. “It cost me a lot of energy to return after the shoe change,” Philipsen admitted. “My best legs were already gone by then.”
The finale only added to the difficulty. Positioning proved tricky in a tense and fragmented run in, with Philipsen initially finding himself boxed in and struggling to move up. “I was with Jonas, but we had to brake because of a crash,” he said.
That moment disrupted the sprint and forced a reset in the final metres. As riders hesitated, teammate Gerben Thijssen reacted quickest, guiding Philipsen back into position at exactly the right moment. “Gerben brought me forward, but that also cost energy,” Philipsen said. “To then still sprint on top of that, I really had to dig deep.”
From there, instinct took over. Philipsen launched his sprint late but with enough speed to come around the chaos and take his first win of the season.
After a string of near misses earlier in the year, the victory clearly brought a sense of relief. “This is very important for the confidence,” he said. “I had to wait a bit for it. Not everything went according to plan and the feeling wasn’t always great, so I’m happy to finally get that first win.”
With Milan-Sanremo on Saturday, the timing is ideal. The 2024 winner heads into La Primavera with a timely boost in confidence, however it came.
Result: Nokere Koerse
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