Tour de France – Jasper Philipsen unbeatable in the sprint – next top result for Phil Bauhaus

“It’s an incredible tour for me. I can’t even begin to realize how great everything has gone so far. I’m so proud of the results, but also of my form,” beamed Philipsen after his fourth success, this time without a driver Mathieu van der Poel found his own way and still asserted himself confidently.

“In the final you always have to make sure that you stay out of all the problems and that’s difficult, but it’s worked four times in a row. So I can win without Mathieu, but he makes it easier,” said the winner.

Bauhaus was comfortable with third place, his third top 3 result on this tour. “I was on Groenewegen’s rear wheel, but his starter Mezgec was a little too early in the wind. That’s why we took it out again, but I was already tired, so I’m happy with the podium,” he said at the finish at Eurosport -Microphone.

Fourth on the stage behind Bauhaus was Frenchman Bryan Coquard (Cofidis) in front of the only man who was able to defeat Philipsen in a sprint finish of this Tour of France – uphill in Limoges on the 8th stage: Mads Pedersen (Lidl – Trek).

With his fourth stage win, Philipsen further extended his lead in the fight for the green jersey. The Belgian now has 323 points and their 145 lead over Coquard. “I now have a good lead in the fight for green, it looks comfortable in front of the Alps,” said Philipsen, who still has one big goal in this tour: winning the stage at the end of the Champs-Élysées in the green jersey.

The mountain jersey stayed with Neilson Powless (EF Education – EasyPost), the white jersey with Tadej Pogacar (UAE Team Emirates), who remains second in the battle for yellow, 17 seconds behind Vingegaard. Bahrain Victorious still holds the lead in the team classification.

This is how the 11th stage of the Tour de France went:

A few kilometers after the start, three men with Andrey Amador (EF Education – EasyPost), Mathis Louvel (Arkéa – Samsic) and Daniel Oss (TotalEnergies) broke away from the peloton. The trio pulled out a two-minute lead before Lotto – Dstny took over the tracking work in the peloton. But since the Belgians didn’t get any help at first, they relaxed again and the gap grew to almost four minutes.

But then Soudal – Quick-Step, Jayco – AlUla and Soudal – Quick-Step also took part with one man each in the lead and together with Lotto – Dstny the gap to the top was gradually, second by second, very gradually reduced again . With 90 kilometers to go there were only 50 seconds left for the three breakaways and after that the peloton tried really hard not to get to the front too early.

When, with the last mountain prize, the general direction of travel was changed to the east a good 60 kilometers before the end, the field of riders got a tailwind to help and the race got faster and faster. At the front, Louvel was the first to say goodbye, followed by Amador with 50 kilometers to go, leaving Oss as the last escape – still 25 seconds ahead.

Runaways all day with no real chance

Alone, the Italian extended his lead to 50 seconds, but the mass sprint could no longer be avoided and a good 20 kilometers before the end, the peloton went full throttle after a short downpour and finally pushed Oss on the pellet, so that the 13.5 kilometers from the finish.

The rain returned again, but the preparations for the sprint went fairly smoothly all the way to the finish in Moulins. But of course it got hectic and wild there, so that no sprint train could keep control. For the first time on this tour, Philipsen didn’t have driver Mathieu van der Poel with him, but he did very well on his own and finally sprinted off the back wheel of Groenewegen to victory, whose driver Luka Mezgec took the lead with a little more than 500 meters from the finish but then had to pull out a little too early.

Behind them, Bauhaus prevailed against Wout van Aert (Jumbo – Visma) in a battle for position and then sprinted in the winner’s slipstream, but couldn’t get any closer to him and had to settle for third place.