Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) won a wild bunch sprint into Bayonne on stage three of the Tour de France.
He beat Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious) and Caleb Ewan (Lotto-Dstny) and Wout van Aert (Jumbo Visma). Well, at least he was pretty sure he did. Not totally positive, not full-on euphoric, not scream and shout level happiness.
Philipen got a dominating lead-out from Mathieu van der Poel so he was perfectly positioned for the win. However, Van Aert began to chase him down along the right side barrier. This is where things became unclear and open to review.
As Van Aert drew almost level, Philipsen was sliding every so steadily to the right, pushing the Jumbo -Visma rider tighter against the barrier. Far too close in the opinion of Van Aert, who was already furious to have just missed winning yesterday’s sprint into San Sebastian.
Van Aert had a split second decison to make: take the risk of somehow staying upright and squeezing thru or easing off the pedals. He choose the prudent course and finished fifth — four places from victory.
Philipsen knew he’d moved off his line a bit so he waited for confirmation as the media mob surrounded him. It was a jusdgement call for the race commissaries, who quickly reviewed the footage. “There was a bit of doubt,” said Philipsen. “They [the commissaires] made it quite exciting in the end.”
Yes, it was a thrilling sprint finish, legal review.
Philipsen won the judgement call and Van Aert is probably back in the team bus, fuming with anger. We get the feeling that Van Aert is about to snap. He’d already come into the race on a negative vibe, claiming the recent Netflix series, the Tour de France, Unchained made it look like there were internal problems between himself and Jonas Vingegaard. He needs a win and some champagne badly.
There’s such a fine line between a magical Tour de France win and banging the handlebars in frustration. “It was tense, but it’s the Tour de France,” said Philipsen. “There are no presents for nobody. I think everybody goes all in, and I can be really happy with our team today.”
Philipsen can also be happy with the race commissaries.
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