After beating the WorldTour stars Down Under and mixing it up with Cavendish and Sagan Stateside, Drapac rider Wouter Wippert says he is ready to make the step up to the WorldTour next year.

“I’m pretty happy with my form at the moment,” he told VeloNews after the Tour de Korea press conference on Saturday. “California was three podiums, but not in the spot I wanted actually. In fact, I was a bit disappointed by those results and since then I’ve trained hard afterwards and should be good this week, so we’ll see.” He wasn’t wrong: he won stage one this morning.

He has ridden at the top before, albeit briefly, with Lotto-Soudal in 2012 as a stagiare and says he is now ready to move up and race against the elites permanently, and he say his results back that claim up.

“I’ve proved that it’s possible for me to compete with those guys and even beat them,” said Wippert. “Hopefully at the end of the year I can make the next step to WorldTour level and from the next year on compete with those guys every race and try to beat them.”

“The biggest challenge I feel that I have when facing WorldTour riders is endurance, as they have more opportunities to race than what we have on our calendar,” explained Wippert.