Van der Poel: Alpecin-Deceuninck will chase more Tour de France stage wins

Mathieu van der Poel might have retained his Tour de France yellow jersey after stage three, but it was not a good day for the Alpecin-Deceuninck team.

With 60km of the stage between Valencienes and Dunkirk remaining, their sprinter, Jasper Philipsen, crashed in the run into the day’s intermediate sprint and was forced to abandon. Philipsen had been wearing the green jersey after winning the opening stage, where he also took yellow, and was a clear favourite for Monday’s third stage into Dunkirk.

“For sure, it's really sad to lose him today and also for the rest of the Tour,” Van der Poel said in a post-race interview. “We had a goal to for the green jersey with him, so its not a happy day today.” 

But such is the brutality of professional sport, and certainly cycling, the race must go on. Alpecin-Deceuninck arrived at the Tour de France with a strong lead-out to support Philipsen’s green points jersey ambitions, including sprinter Kaden Groves. 

It was Groves who delivered Philipsen to his stage one victory and, though the Australian may not be quite the same quality as his Belgian team mate, he is an accomplished sprinter, with 20 race victories to his name and two points classification wins of his own, though both of those were at the Vuelta a España, where he took seven of his victories.

“Kaden also showed in the past that he’s able to win, but I think it was difficult to refocus today, but we will do so in the coming days and fight for the win with Kaden,” said Van der Poel briefly, clearly not yet ready to forget the stricken Philipsen.

The next possible sprint stage is not likely until Saturday’s eighth into Laval, and before that comes Tuesday’s lumpy finish into Rouen, which appears similar to stage two, when Van der Poel won, claiming the yellow jersey in Boulogne-sur-Mer. However, instead of three short, sharp classified climbs in the closing 30km as there were on Sunday, the run into Rouen has four, the last two coming in quick succession. Indeed, the Rampe Saint-Hillaire, which tops out 5.2km from the finish line, averages well over 10% gradient over its 800m.

Whatever the finish and whoever he is fighting for the win, the stage is certain to be in Van der Poel’s sights and he’ll be desperate to retain yellow to honour both his father, Adrie and grandfather, Raymond Poulidor, whose final Tour successes came 41 and 51 years ago respectively.

“It looks quite a hard stage, so I hope to find some good legs and be able to battle for the win and be able to defend the yellow jersey,” he concluded.