Jakobsen knows when he wants to return to the peloton: "I feel there is a lot of improvement"

His yellow dream fell apart this year. In 2020, Alexander Kristoff (now with Uno-X) was the last sprinter to take the yellow jersey on the Tour’s opening stage. Five years later, a sprinter again has a good chance to wear yellow after the first stage. Jakobsen underwent surgery in April, forcing him to pause his career. “Your world kind of collapses then, because of course I had a yellow dream in Lille. You see that vanish instantly.”

“My mind was racing way faster than the doctor was telling me,” Jakobsen said earlier. The doctor was surprised by his results in recent years, Jakobsen now reveals. “When the surgeon saw what the issue was, he found it remarkable that I had even been getting results at all.” This season, the Picnic PostNL sprinter still managed three top-10 finishes. His last victory was in April 2024, when he won a stage at the Tour of Turkey.

Three weeks ago, Jakobsen was at a training camp in Spain with Nils Eekhoff. Eekhoff later said to IDLProCycling.com that he was training more than Jakobsen at that camp, as Jakobsen was still building back up. But now Jakobsen has shared an update. “I’m training again, four hours in blocks of two days. It remains to be seen how it holds up under heavy efforts, but I feel there is a lot of improvement. If all goes well, I want to make my comeback at the Tour of Denmark on August 12.”

Casper van Uden won the fourth stage of the Giro d’Italia in May, breaking through as a new top sprinter. Jakobsen is very happy for him, he says. “The sprint program within the team is going well. A sprint train performs when the sprinter wins. Casper did that brilliantly in the Giro. I would have liked to do that too, but I kept having to say in the team bus that I was falling short myself.”

Despite these successes, the 28-year-old Jakobsen isn’t afraid of competition or jealousy: “I don’t really see Casper as competition because I’m not sprinting against him. He’s at the start of his career, where I once was too. I hope he becomes so good that he can deliver top performances in the Tour.” He compares it to football. “If Brian Brobbey (Ajax’s striker) doesn’t score, he gets substituted for Wout Weghorst, who then does score. If the other guy is scoring, it keeps everyone sharp. That’s how it works in cycling too.”