Philipsen snaps ‘horrible’ drought with Tour de France stage 17 victory

Jasper Philipsen admitted he had been feeling the pressure before sprinting to a dominant victory from a reduced bunch at the end of the Tour de France’s Alpine 17th stage on Wednesday, to end a “horrible” run of near misses.

Set up by a strong lead-out from team-mate Mathieu van der Poel, Philipsen surged several bike lengths clear of Mauro Schmid and Olav Kooij, who had each already won a stage at the Tour.

This was an 11th Tour stage victory overall for the 28-year-old Belgian, who won the sprinters’ green points jersey in 2023.

It meant that he has won at least one stage in each of the last five editions of the Tour.

He had come close on several other sprint stages this year, finishing five times in the top five.

He said that the first part of the Tour had been “horrible, I couldn’t find myself, I couldn’t find the form I was hoping for”.