Following his Tour de France stage 16 win, sprinter Jasper Philipsen recognised that he now had a small chance of conquering the green jersey for a second year running. But with only hilly or mountainous stages and a time trial left in this year's Tour, the Belgian star was definitely not counting his 'points chickens' before they were hatched.
“About 5%,” Philipsen responded when asked how great his chances were of wearing green on the final podium of the Tour de France, which will now hinge on points won and lost in the four remaining intermediate sprints between Nîmes and Nice.
Philipsen and current green jersey holder Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty) have now won three stages apiece in the 2024 race. However, Girmay, who has a better run of placings so far, was unfortunate enough to crash heavily on the run-in to Nîmes.
Girmay then completed the stage, partly supported by two of his teammates, but as a result of his fall he lost a chance of adding to his points jersey total. Philipsen, meanwhile, re-entered the battle for green as a combined result of Girmay’s setback and his third stage victory in the 2024 Tour just a few minutes later.
Asked about his chances of regaining green given this radically changed scenario, Philipsen recognised that fighting for points in intermediate sprints in the Alps, starting with stage 17 to Superdevoluy on Wednesday, was a long way from his favoured battlegrounds of flat finishes like at Nîmes.
“Yeah, it´s different, I cannot completely empty the tank in intermediate sprints because I still have to climb up the mountains,” Philipsen told reporters.
“People say I’m closer to the green jersey now, but the main sprints are over. The difference between us [32 points] is not a lot, but if there are no sprint stages left, it's almost impossible.
“At the same time, it´s good to have a small goal for the coming days, and to see if I can get some points instead of just riding around and with my only target trying to get to Nice.
“Everything is possible, but it's going to be really hard. Biniam is climbing really well and I just hope he's OK after the crash, because he doesn't deserve to lose like this, either.”
Even before Girmay’s crash and his ninth Tour bunch sprint win, though, Philipsen showed that he had not wholly given up on the points fight when he went for an intermediate sprint during stage 16.
At the sprint at Les Matellettes (km 96.1) Philipsen finished second behind Bryan Coquard (Cofidis), while Girmay claimed fourth. As a result, he regained four points on Girmay.
Philipsen´s best chances of getting more intermediate sprints points will likely come on Wednesday at Veynes (km 114.8), as there are no classified climbs coming beforehand.
He´ll then have another good chance on stage 19 to Isola, which is much more mountainous overall, but where the sprint is very early in the day (km 21.1). Each intermediate sprint offers 20 points to the winner.
This is all comparatively small fare compared to when Philipsen won the green jersey for a first time in his career back in 2023 with a whopping final 119-point lead over Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek). This time, Girmay has 376 points and Philipsen 344, while Coquard is in third place with a distant 179 points, meaning that only the Intermarché-Wanty sprinter or the Alpecin-Deceunink rider has any chance at all of green in Nice on Sunday.
Whatever happens, though, Philipsen can celebrate taking three stages in a race which could not have started more badly, with first a crash in Turin and then a relegation in the opening week. On top of that, as he said, his initial Tour form was not ideal - something that has changed dramatically in the last week.
“I’ve talked about it with the team and for sure we’ll analyse it,” Philipsen said after winning his third stage in eight days and when asked about his poor start. “I was missing a few percentage points, but I´m feeling much better right now.
“I had bad luck in the first part of the Tour, too, but you can’t blame everything on bad luck, there’s also some luck that you make for yourself.”
As for winning immediately after a rest day in the Tour on stage 10 and again after a rest day on stage 16, he put it down to “just coincidence. Of course, my shape has been better, too, but I was feeling really motivated each time. I was good to go.”
The key question at this point is what is motivating him and other sprinters to finish the Tour, give the utter lack of sprint opportunities from this point onwards.
Even Tadej Pogačar said after stage 16 that he hoped the race organisation would extend the time limit on the final time trial on Sunday, purely to encourage the fast men to stay all the way to the finish in Nice.
“It´s a good question,” said Philipsen, who won the final stage on the Champs Elysées in 2022, when asked what was inspiring him for five more days of suffering in 2024.
“Being so close to green makes for another goal rather than just wanting to complete the race, of course. But I’ll have to push some really high numbers in the gruppetto, just to be sure I finish inside the time limit each day in the Alps."
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