Belgian Jasper Philipsen won a bunch sprint on stage 16 of the Tour de France at Nimes on Tuesday while his green sprint points jersey rival Biniam Girmay fell in the final dash.
Overnight leader Tadej Pogacar of UAE Team Emirates has a 3 minute 09 second advantage over defending champion Jonas Vingegaard while Remco Evenepoel remains third at 5min 19sec.
Last year’s green jersey winner Philipsen and Girmay both have three stage wins each, but the Eritrean leads the rankings for the green jersey this year on 376pts to 344pts.
Girmay, however, fell at a roundabout less than 2 kilometres out with two Education First riders and was unable to compete in the sprint for the line.
His elbow was bleeding but the 24-year-old managed to remount and cruise home with a couple of team-mates, albeit ashen-faced.
“It’s close, so we’ll be playing it day by day now… You don’t like to see anyone fall, I hope he can carry on,” said Philipsen, who topped 70kph (43mph) as he raced over the line.
“Victories are hard to come by on the Tour de France so a third one is amazing,” added the Belgian, who was led out by world champion Mathieu van der Poel.
Van der Poel is one of the favourites for the Olympic Games road race in Paris in two weeks’ time.
Because of the Olympics, this year’s Tour de France will finish in Nice on Sunday — meaning there will be no final day dash down the iconic Champs Elysees.
Pogacar mentioned this after Tuesday’s race.
“It’s a shame for the sprinters not to have the final day sprint, they don’t have that much motivation to finish the race but I hope they come all the way with us,” said the yellow jersey holder.
Germany’s Phil Bauhaus was second and Norway’s Alexander Kristoff was third.
Kristoff rides for Norwegian outfit Uno-X, two of whose team cars narrowly avoided a crash at a roundabout late in the race.
One of those cars had Johannes Kulset right behind it riding at 60kph.
The 24-year-old Evenepoel, on his first Tour de France, leads the white jersey standings — for the outstanding young rider — by over six minutes from Ineos’ Spanish rider Carlos Rodriguez.
The Tour de France race organisers extended the feared time cut Sunday to allow Mark Cavendish and other haggard stragglers to remain on the race and compete in Tuesday’s flat stage, where 152 survivors of the first 15 stages departed.
Tuesday’s race was the last of the sprint stages with mountains galore on the menu from now on.
The race left the Gruissan salt basin with the mercury tipping 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) as the peloton rolled through the vineyards of the Aude region at speeds that fluctuated with the direction of the wind.