Jasper Philipsen sprinted to victory as his team Alpecin-Deceuninck timed their lead-out to perfection on Tuesday’s 16th stage of the Tour de France, a 189km flat ride from Gruissan to Nimes.
The win was Philipsen’s third on the Tour this year after victories on stages 10 and 13 while green jersey holder Biniam Girmay, who has also won three stages, crashed in the final 2km.
Slovenia's Tadej Pogacar retained his yellow jersey with a lead of three minutes and nine seconds over Jonas Vingegaard in the general classification while Remco Evenepoel remains over five minutes behind.
Alpecin-Deceuninck controlled the sprint as the riders moved up to the front to set up the victory for Philipsen and it worked to perfection as Mathieu van der Poel’s textbook lead-out allowed his Belgian team-mate to win comfortably.
“I’m really happy after such a team effort. It’s always nice when you can win together and that’s what we did today, definitely,” Philipsen said.
“I didn’t see the crash [involving Girmay]. We were trying to position ourselves and focus on our own lead-out. I hope everyone is okay.
“I was feeling good, I had a good rest day [on Monday], my shape improved during the Tour. So I was confident if we could line it up good today, we could go for the win. It’s a difficult level, so three wins is good. We can be proud.”
Philipsen crossed the line ahead of Phil Bauhaus, Alex Kristoff, with Ireland’s Sam Bennett in fourth, his highest finish of the race and his third top 10.
Ben Healy came home in 96th position and remains in 13th overall and fifth in the young rider classification.
Girmay eventually got back on his bike as his team-mates helped him across the line. But the Eritrean saw his lead in the sprint standings reduced to 32 points.
While there are no more flat stages on the Tour, the green jersey is still very much up for grabs with intermediate sprints in the next five stages.
“Everything is possible. He [Girmay] is climbing really well,” Philipsen added. “I hope he’s okay after the crash because he doesn’t deserve to lose like this. I will try whatever I can because the hard stages are to come.”
Wednesday’s stage 17 is a 178km ride from Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux to Superdevoluy.
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