Stage 4 of the 2023 Tour de France saw Belgian fastman Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) claim a second victory in two days in a crash-filled bunch sprint finale.
Caleb Ewan (Lotto-Dstny) finished a narrowly defeated second on the flat stage from Dax to Nogaro, with Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious) in third.
Sprinter Fabio Jakobsen (Soudal-QuickStep) was amongst the late fallers on the motor speedway circuit that hosted the finish.
Adam Yates (UAE Team Emirates) retained the overall lead for a fourth straight day.
After two bunch sprints, the race heads into the mountains, with a tough day starting in Pau and finishing in Laruns after the hors categorie Col de Soudet and category 1 Col de Marie-Blanque.
Having had to wait several minutes for his victory to be confirmed on Monday because of possibly moving his sprint line in the finale, this time despite only finishing half a wheel ahead of Ewan, Philipsen’s second triumph in 24 hours was a clear one.
“It was close in the end, so I was happy they confirmed quickly,” Philipsen said afterwards.
“It was a really easy stage, I think everybody wanted to save legs for the Pyrenees tomorrow and the day after. But in the final kilometres entering the circuit in the final, I heard some crashes around me, so I hope everybody is ok and safe.
“It was a bit of a hectic final with the turns in the end. I lost my team as well, but in the final straight I found [teammate] Mathieu van der Poel again and he did an amazing pull to get me to victory. But my legs were cramping and Caleb was coming close.”
How it unfolded
A very slow start saw virtually no attacks in the first two hours, with a brief move by Michael Gogl (Alpecin-Deceuninck) and Jasper Stuyven (Lidl-Trek) and an even briefer dig by Wout Van Aert (Jumbo-Visma) the only race action of note. Soudal-QuickStep kept a nominal control at the front of the bunch and there was precious little else to report as the pace continued at a sluggish 37 km/h average for kilometre after kilometre across the flatlands of southern France.
Things finally burst into some sort of life in the intermediate sprint at Notre Dame des Cyclistes when Philipsen outsprinted Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) and Ewan to move provisionally into green - a lead he would then amply confirm with the stage victory.
A move then went clear, containing Ag2R-Citröen all-rounder Benoit Cosnefroy and Arkea-Samsic’s Anthony Delaplace. The two Frenchmen continued their attempt as the road began to undulate more notably prior to the one classified ascent of the day, the category 4 Côte de Dému. But having lost half their lead on that one short climb, their effort petered out shortly afterwards.
The bunch massed across the broad, two-lane road in various tightly grouped formations as the speed increased notably to over 60 km/h in the last 10 kilometres, from DSM-Firmenich staying ahead on the far right through to Bora-Hansgrohe and Lotto-Dstny in the middle to Alpecin-Deceuninck on the far left. Riders began to slide out of the back of the bunch, as Luis Léon Sanchez brought Cavendish to the front and the fight to stay up intensified even further and teams split apart on a series of fast corners.
Jumbo-Visma then brought Jonas Vingegaard up for the narrow entrance and turn into the gates and Matej Mohoric (Bahrain Victorious) led the lined-out bunch onto the finishing circuit. But as Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan) put it, afterwards the stage descended into “carnage,” with the corners and multiple crashes, most just involving two or three riders, making it hard for any clear pattern to emerge and seeing the bunch strung out into several large groups.
Amongst those fallen were Luis León Sánchez, later reported to have a broken collarbone, with Lotto-Dstny’s Jacopo Guarnieri also said to be badly injured, while Jakobsen, although bloodied and scraped up, could complete the course.
In the closing kilometre of the tumultuous bunch sprint finale, Van der Poel’s lead out in the very finishing straight pulled Philipsen clear just as Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) - fortunately not badly injured - tangled with an Uno-X rider and hit the right-hand barrier in the middle of the speeding peloton.
Philipsen was just able to stay ahead of Ewan despite his cramps, both doubling his stage tally for 2023 and putting his hat in the ring for the green jersey with a considerable points advantage.
Meanwhile, his rivals and teams assessed the damage on a very difficult finish to what had been - until the last kilometres - by far the most straightforward day of the Tour to date.
Results
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