This was one of those sleepy days at the Tour de France that ended with a jolt; a peaceful 184km woken in the final two by a tense and frantic bunch sprint. Jasper Philipsen crossed the line first, though his win was not without controversy as race commissaires studied the way he blocked off his fellow Belgian Wout van Aert on the final bend. The conclusion was that Philipsen raced fairly – and perhaps that you shouldn’t organise a sprint finish on a curved road.
Van Aert was left slapping his handlebars and cursing his luck. In San Sebastian he lost out to a tactical mishap by his team; here in Bayonne – as the Tour left Spain and arrived in France – he ran out of space between Philipsen’s elbow and a metal barrier running along the turn’s inside. Sprinters will risk almost anything for a Tour de France stage win, but burrowing through that gap at 75kph was a gamble too far, and Van Aert sat up.
