Belgian Jasper Philipsen on Tuesday won a bunch sprint on stage 16 of the Tour de France in Nimes while his green sprint points jersey rival Biniam Girmay fell in the final dash.
In the struggle for the overall leader’s yellow jersey, Tadej Pogacar has a 3 minute, 9 second advantage over defending champion Jonas Vingegaard, while Remco Evenepoel remains third at 5 minutes, 19 seconds with several potential game-changing stages still ahead.
The 24-year-old Evenepoel, on his first Tour de France, also holds a comfortable lead in the white jersey standings — for the outstanding young rider.
Photo: AFP
However, on this flat run in the south of France, last year’s green jersey winner Philipsen emerged victorious and has 344pts to the Eritrean Girmay’s 376 in the sprint ranking.
Both have three stage wins, but Philipsen lost crucial points in the green jersey tussle after being relegated from second to bottom spot for deviating from his line during the sixth stage in Dijon.
Leader Girmay fell at a roundabout less than 2km out in Nimes, with two EF Education–EasyPost riders, and was unable to compete in the sprint for the line.
His elbow was bleeding, but the usually smiling 24-year-old remounted and cruised home with a couple of teammates, albeit ashen-faced.
“It’s close, so we’ll be playing it day by day now... You don’t like to see anyone fall, I hope he can carry on,” said Philipsen, who topped 70kph as he raced over the line.
“Victories are hard to come by on the Tour de France so a third one is amazing,” added the Belgian, who was led out by world champion Mathieu van der Poel.
Van der Poel is one of the favorites for the Olympic Games road race in Paris in two weeks.
Because of the Olympics, this year’s Tour de France would finish in Nice on Sunday — meaning there would be no final day dash down the iconic Champs Elysees.
“It’s a shame for the sprinters not to have the final day sprint, they don’t have that much motivation to finish the race but I hope they come all the way with us,” Pogacar said after Tuesday’s race.
The Tour de France race organizers extended the feared time cut on Sunday to allow Mark Cavendish and other haggard stragglers to remain on the race and compete in Tuesday’s flat stage, where 152 survivors of the first 15 stages departed.
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