Jasper Philipsen has a stranglehold on bunch sprints at the Tour de France, but Dylan Groenewegen will fight to loosen that grip until Paris, after finishing second to the in-form Belgian on Wednesday.
Groenewegen was well positioned at the end of stage 11, with his Jayco AlUla team delivering him to the front of the bunch with open road ahead in Moulins. The Dutchman thought he was on for the win, before the Alpecin-Deceuninck fast man came around him in the last 150 metres to take his fourth victory of this race.
Speaking after a cool-down outside his team bus, Groenewegen was complimentary of his teammates, especially chief pilot Luka Mezgec, who he described as one of the best lead-out men in the world.
“We came from really far, but I trust in Luka, and he bring me totally in front with 400 metres to go, and I was thinking this may be a little bit too early. Then I go behind [Alexander] Kristoff [Uno-X Pro Cycling] and I was waiting for his sprint, but he didn’t accelerate really fast, so I go by myself,” Groenewegen said.
“It was a long way, but I was thinking, ‘today is our day,’ but in the end somebody was better.”
Philipsen has swept four of five bunch kicks at the Tour thus far, and has three more opportunities for pure sprinters in the last week of the race. Some of his rivals have already started to mentally concede to the 25-year-old, but Groenewegen was not among them.
Asked for his thoughts on Philipsen, Groenewegen quipped: “He’s a good sprinter enough!” The best way to beat him, Groenewegen said, was to keep trying.
He’ll have to survive some tough days in the mountains to do that. Stage 12 with five categorised climbs lends more to the climbers or a breakaway, and the peloton then face stages in the Jura and Alps, before the pure sprinters get their next shot on stage 18 in Bourg-en-Bresse.
“That’s everything we can do. We keep on trying. There are two or three more stages to come, so we fight until Paris. The upcoming week will be really hard, but we will fight until Paris,” Groenewegen said.
The 30-year-old has steadily improved at the Tour, with his second place in Moulins following a fourth-place finish on an uphill drag at the end of stage 8 in Limoges, behind puncheur Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek). He was also fifth on stage 7.
Jayco AlUla director of high performance Matt White believes Groenewegen will be able to deliver on that fight, with the team altering his Tour preparation based on this year’s route.
“Sometimes in the Tour de France there is one sprint in the last week. This year we knew there was three and we’ve adjusted his run-in to the Tour de France accordingly,” White said.
“We saw in the uphill sprint a couple of days ago, normally that’s too hard for Dylan. So, we’re confident in his condition. Condition is one thing in sprinting, the other thing is timing, and the sprint group got the timing perfect today. Unfortunately, Philipsen was just that little bit too fast.”
