Nobody is to blame for Philipsen's crash - Marcel Kittel Tour de France analysis

A lot of stage 3 of the Tour de France was actually pretty boring. Not a lot was happening and the peloton was quite relaxed, but it still ended up being a really stressful day because of the crashes. In the end, no day is ever really relaxed at the Tour.

The first big talking point, of course, was Jasper Philipsen’s nasty crash at the intermediate sprint. It’s a real pity to lose him from the Tour, not for just for him and for Alpecin-Deceuninck, but also for us as fans, because he was so impressive when he won stage 1.

Bryan Coquard apologised afterwards for his part in the incident, but I really think there was nobody to blame for that crash. It was just a very unfortunate moment at the intermediate sprit. 

If you really try to analyse it, you see that Coquard had to move a little bit to the right because Jonathan Milan was moving right in front of him, and just as he moved, he bumped against Laurenz Rex.

Coquard didn’t see him and obviously Rex wasn’t expecting that movement, but there was nothing either of them could do. That’s where everything went wrong – they touched and then Coquard bounced into Philipsen and the crash happened. Philipsen couldn’t do anything to avoid the crash; it was out of his control. A real shame, for him and for the race.

There had been no breakaway to that point and maybe there was a relaxed feeling among the riders, maybe they weren’t always paying attention. Mentally you need to be ready all the time for what is coming. Like I said, I don’t think there wasn’t anything intentional about that crash, but it was a real wake-up moment for the peloton ahead of the finale.

The next crash was with about 3km to go, with Remco Evenepoel among the guys getting caught up in it. You could see Jonathan Milan was just trying to follow his lead-out guys and he got squeezed a bit as he came through. The next thing, there was a touch of wheels, and enough guys crashed to block the whole road. That was the second wake-up call, so to speak, and another warning to pay attention.

But that wasn’t the end of it. There was another crash in the finishing straight and it looked like a nasty one, but I have to say that I didn’t get a proper look at it. I saw that Danny van Poppel was relegated afterwards, but I didn’t actually see the movement, so I can’t really assess it.

I did get a good look at the sprint, however, and after all that chaos, we still saw a really good duel between Tim Merlier and Jonathan Milan. I don’t think Milan made any mistakes here, he just came up against a really, really good Merlier.

Lidl-Trek’s most important job in the finale was to be first into the right-hand corner with 1.5km to go, and they did that. As we expected they were really strong there, but to do that, they had to use up men a bit earlier than normal. 

Ed Theuns was the last man and he brought Milan as far as he could, but that was no problem because Milan knew there was another train coming up behind them. He chose his moment well, and he jumped on the back of the Picnic-PostNL guys when they moved up and he was able to sit very comfortably on their wheel.

In a headwind sprint, it’s always hard to judge, but again, I don’t think Milan went too early or too late. I think he went at exactly the right moment - it was a great sprint between him and Merlier. Milan just missed out, and he’ll be disappointed. But his key takeaway should be that everything is still possible for him on the Tour – he’s clearly among the fastest guys here.

You also just have to say that Merlier’s performance was really impressive. He was more or less on his own – “OK, good luck, Tim” – in the final kilometre and he had to use a lot of energy to move up and he still had the strength left to win the sprint.

To do that on a finale like this obviously tell us a lot about his shape and condition, but it also shows just how smart he was. He has this ability to find a gap somewhere and get himself into the right place at the right time.

Merlier took over the green jersey after Philipsen’s crash, but I think the whole dynamic of the points classification could change now. Mathieu van der Poel came into the Tour saying that he was only interested in stage wins and Philipsen was clearly targeting the green jersey for Alpecin-Deceuninck.

Now, they have Kaden Groves to step up for the bunch sprints, but we might see Van der Poel start contesting intermediate sprints. Like he showed on the Giro d’Italia a few years ago, he can get over climbs on harder days and get points that the other sprinters can’t, so he’s a real threat if he wants to target it. It’s still early in the Tour too.

Beyond Van der Poel, I think Biniam Girmay is also in good shape to defend the green jersey he won last year. He’s already picking up points on the flat – he’s only four points behind Milan – and he can maybe hope to get some points on punchier days too. It should be a really good competition.