Jasper Philipsen and Mathieu Van der Poel can congratulate themselves. The Alpecin team has indeed struck on this Tour de France. We found the hellish duo of 2023 where Philipsen, always well led by Van der Poel, had won several times and had won the green jersey.
From the start, Jasper Philipsen and Mathieu Van der Poel seemed to have trouble finding each other. But the world champion, this time, launched perfectly and deposited in ideal conditions 200 m from the line, his Belgian teammate. Philipsen is ahead of the green jersey Biniam Girmay (Intermarché – Wanty) and Pascal Ackermann (Israel – Premier Tech).
After Biniam Girmay (Intermarché – Wanty) (3rd and 8th stages), Mark Cavendish (Astana) (5th stage) and Dylan Groenewegen (Jayco-AlUla) (6th stage), this fifth mass sprint of the Tour de France was therefore won by a 4th sprinter.
“It wasn’t a great first week,” Jasper Philipsen admitted to Eurosport. “We had some bad luck. I’m happy to win, together with a great team, a great job from the team. We did what we came to do on the Tour de France. We’ve grown since the start. It’s already stage 10 and finally we won. The team continued to trust me. I’m going to continue to focus on the stages.” “He shouldn’t have doubted and he did a great sprint,” Mathieu Van der Poel rejoices.
Before this sprint, this stage had been very calm, even boring, without any significant breakaway apart from that of Kobe Goossens (Intermarché) at the beginning. Since nothing else happened, he was elected fighter of the day for his few kilometers in the lead. There was no wind, so no echelon like in 2013 in the Saint-Amand-Montrond stage and the average, rather low hourly during the first hours, only increased during the last 50 kilometers.
This Wednesday, the 11th stage will leave from Évaux-les-Bains to reach Le Lioran (211 km) and should be favorable to the adventurers.