Returning to Team DSM after a five-year absence, 32-year-old German John Degenkolb believes he can win major honors in the spring classics and Grand Tours.

The former Paris-Roubaix and Milan-San Remo winner spent the past two years with Lotto-Soudal and the three years before that with Trek-Segafredo.

He returns to Team DSM (the team where he enjoyed the bulk of his success from 2012-2016) a more experienced rider, and six years after his phenomenal 2015 season, the German is determined to show he can still be a force in the peloton.

"My biggest ambition is to find the right combination of being a road captain and a rider who can share his experience and help young riders. But I also have my own ambitions," he told Cycling News.

"If I can help the young riders, I can motivate them. I still have the ambition to win races. I'm 32 now, almost 33, but I'm not too old to compete at the highest level or in big races."

Degenkolb admitted that his career could be divided into two periods: the first was in 2016, before the incident in which a driver hit Degenkolb and several teammates at a training camp in Spain; the second was afterwards, when the German was recovering and at the highest level It was a time when he needed time to regain it.

"After all these years I am still the same person, but with more experience. But if you want to point to the accident that happened in 2016, there is certainly a career before the accident and a career after it happened. That's not a bad thing, by any means. Degenkolb famously won the Paris-Roubaix stage of the 2018 Tour de France, marking his return to the top, but his time in Lotto-Soudal was hampered by a pandemic and injuries.

He crashed on the first stage of the 2020 Tour de France, and later that year, he finished in the top 10 in the spring classics, but failed to reach top form; in 2021, he finished in the top 10, but Lotto-Soudal's Tour de France he was left out of the team.

"The classics will definitely be my first goal. From that moment on we will have a great plan for the year, but the classics will be the first main thing. The team would also like to compete in the Grand Tours, but we haven't decided how to do that yet.

"I'm excited to be working with a whole new group of people, including a new trainer in Germany with whom I've found a great connection, and all the riders, etc. I'm full of motivation and enthusiasm for 2022."

The Team DSM roster for the Tour de France is still undecided, but with the race returning to the cobbled Arenberg, Degenkolb is instantly attracted to the idea of trying to win a stage on the cobbles. I can say I made my career there and it would be foolish to miss a stage like that again. It's a big goal for me personally, but it depends on what the team wants. I'm happy to be part of the team and have new challenges and goals for the next part of my career."

"Honestly, I'm only thinking about next year. I don't feel old enough to say this will be my last contract. I think it's a great privilege to be a professional rider. I am very happy to be back with Team DSM. It's exciting and from the first moment I came back to the team, it definitely felt like coming home. At the first team meeting I realized that it was the right decision for me to come back."