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.
“I know the right side is the shortest to the finish line,” Philipsen said as he defended his apparent veer towards the railings. “The margins are small in sprinting. We don’t want to be unfair, but I think it’s logical that you take the short side.”
For Philipsen it might just be the start of a special Tour. He was rather cruelly dubbed “Jasper the Disaster’’ by Netflix in the recent Tour de France: Unchained series (a nickname no one in the media seemed to be familiar with before the show), primarily for celebrating victory last year on a stage that he hadn’t won, having been beaten by a solo escapee – these things happen.
But the 25-year-old is a growing presence in the peloton. This was his third Tour de France stage win, his sixth at a grand tour, and there is the sense that this could be a memorable month. Netflix are here again for season two and editors will be hard-pushed to make Philipsen look like anything but a polished professional at the top of his discipline.
Are you the best sprinter in the world, he was asked. “We can say in Paris,” he replied.
His victory was in no small part down to his highly efficient Alpecin-Deceuninck leadout train. Jonas Rickaert and Mathieu van der Poel shielded their king sprinter through the winding finale as rivals jostled for position, and Van der Poel led the way before dropping Philipsen off with 250m to go. Being transported to the finish by the winner of Milan-San Remo and Paris-Roubaix is going to be a powerful weapon.
“It’s not easy to stay in Mathieu’s wheel,” Philipsen said of his multi-talented teammate. “I knew it was fast. Just the build-up towards the sprint was very hard [but] it’s really hard to pass us. Sprinting is about positioning and timing so it will not always work out, but I’m really happy today that it did.”
German rider Phil Bauhaus of Bahrain Victorious and Australian Lotto-Dstny sprinter Caleb Ewan finished second and third, with Mark Cavendish coming home sixth. Cavendish grinned as he congratulated Philipsen – the Manxman’s mere presence in the final melee was a promising sign in his bid to win a record 35th stage in what is his last Tour de France.
Philipsen celebrates his victory in Bayonne— (AP)
For the general classification contenders like Jonas Vingegaard and Tadej Pogacar, this was an opportunity to rest. The yellow jersey still belongs to Pogacar’s UAE Emirates teammate Adam Yates, who described it as a “recovery day”, which might not be what organisers had in mind. It was ridden relatively slowly, averaging around 40km/h, as riders conserved themselves for the high Pyrenees this week and the sizeable challenge of the Col du Tourmalet.
“Days like today you can have a big crash, anything can happen,” Yates said. “We’ve got two cards to play [in Pogacar and himself]. In the Pyrenees we’ll put our plans into action.”
First comes another sprint on Tuesday. There is no danger of a kink in the road at the finish of stage four, on the home straight of the Circuit Paul Armagnac motor racing track in Nogaro. Van Aert, Ewan and Cavendish will welcome another chance so soon after missing out in Bayonne. Then again, they have less than 24 hours to figure out exactly how to resist the Van der Poel-Philipsen double punch.
