Jasper Philipsen has done it again 344 days later. After raising his arms on the Champs Elysees in the last sprint of the last edition of the Tour and winning on the banks of the Seine, the Belgian runner won, on the banks of the Adur, in the first battle for sprinters of the gala round. The one from Alpecin-Deceuninck passed with authority at the finish of Bayonne Bauhaus, Ewan, Jakobsen, Van Aert and Cavendish after his teammate Mathieu van der Poel made his job easier in the final meters of the stage. Adam Yates, meanwhile, keeps the yellow jersey for one more day and will in all probability arrive as leader in the Pyrenees.
The 25-year-old Belgian runner took a much-coveted stage. The sprinters arrived with some anxiety after the first two stages with traces of classics. Only Van Aert, a solid classicist in the sprints, had had a chance in the second stage and, in fact, he faced the appointment with the desire to get rid of the bad taste left by the arrival in San Sebastià, where the Jumbos saw like a Victor Lafay missile.
Cavendish also had the arrival in Bayonne between his eyebrows and was thinking of making history and taking his thirty-fifth stage triumph in the Tour, to break the tie he maintains with Eddy Merckx. Caleb Ewan, meanwhile, was looking to cap off yet another disappointing season. However, none of them could match the hunger and legs of Philipsen, who showed power and dexterity in a tricky finish and ability to work as a team. A blow of authority that means the third victory in the Tour for the Belgian and confirms him as one of the specialists of the moment.
The first classic sprint of the round was decided in the last meter of a 194-kilometer stage that ran between Amorebieta and Baiona, a Basque-French city located in the New Aquitaine region. After two exceptionally hard stages, as is usually the case at the start of the Tour, the rider set off at the pace of a cyclist on a route that climbed the rugged Basque coast from kilometer 40. Neilson Powless (Education First) and Laurent Pichón (Arkea) starred in the escape of the day, and the Frenchman managed to cross the Bidasoa alone, after a 154 kilometer escape aborted 40 from the finish line.
From there, the spotlight finally went to the sprinters. The eyes were fixed on an angry Wout van Aert or Cavendish himself. Until Philipsen broke in from one of the sides of the road to show that, a year later, he has the legs to fight.
The route, apart from that, served to say goodbye to the three stages that have made up the Grand Depart Pays Basque. It has been almost 600 kilometers of the start of the Tour, more demanding than usual, which have served to confirm the supremacy of Pogacar and Vingegaard by crowning the gates, to dismiss Enric Mas and Richard Carapaz after a fall in the first stage and to experience a high-altitude cycling environment that cannot be tarnished by the thumbtacks that some fool threw on the road near San Sebastià. Along with the pilot’s two roosters, the loyal Basque fans have also been crowned.
