Why Mathieu van der Poel could now hold the key to the Tour's green jersey race

Mads Pedersen held a lead of 31 points over Jasper Philipsen ahead of stage 17. It wasn’t quite match point, but he would have felt that the rugged terrain offered him a chance to distance his rival and put daylight between them ahead of the Tour’s grand finale. 

The thought seemed to inform Pedersen’s approach to the stage. He signalled his intentions early by making a mammoth attempt to catch the front of the race on the Col des Près, and he later summoned the strength to bludgeon his way across to the sizeable break of the day.

With Philipsen closing in on the break, Pedersen proceeded to punch his way clear in a six-man move with 57km to go. He duly hoovered up the maximum 25 points in the intermediate sprint at Colombe, and although Philipsen won the sprint for seventh, Pedersen’s provisional lead now stood at 47 points.

Pedersen and his companions would be swept up by the chasing group – which included Philipsen – with 15km to go, however, and suddenly the day’s gains were at risk. Although Pedersen had Quinn Simmons and Derek Gee-West for company in the front group, Philipsen had a trump card in Alpecin-Deceuninck teammate Mathieu van der Poel.

Inevitably, Van der Poel produced a pitch-perfect lead-out and Philipsen, after a series of difficulties, finally notched up his first stage win of this Tour and his 11th in total. Philipsen’s primary concern was with winning a stage, but when the dust settled, he found himself just seven points off Pedersen’s green jersey.

Pedersen was never going to compete with Philipsen’s raw speed here, but he would have expected to have limited his losses significantly better than he did. He could only manage eighth, however, and suddenly, he finds himself in a real contest for the green jersey.

In recognition of his aggression across the stage, Pedersen was awarded the prize for the day’s most combative rider, but he couldn’t even pretend to summon enthusiasm for the honour. “This is an award I don’t need,” Pedersen said, perhaps mindful that the award also doubled as a critique of his strategy.

Given his buffer before the stage, there is an argument that Pedersen might have been better served by trying to engineer a situation where a big break went clear without him or Philipsen aboard. 

But that dour, spoiling approach seemed to run anathema to Pedersen’s all-action style. Even on the final approach to Voiron, he set his Lidl-Trek teammates Derek Gee-West and Quinn Simmons to work on an unclassified rise in a bid to burn off Philipsen, before calling stop when he realised he risked losing touch himself.

“There's not much to say,” Pedersen told TV2 of his tactics. “I can stand here and analyse from here to the moon and back. It was just a shitty day.”

Winning the green jersey is about putting together more good days than bad, and Pedersen has credit in the bank in that regard. He has been in possession of the green jersey since he thundered to victory from the break in Foix on stage 4 after a masterclass from his Lidl-Trek squad, and he has kept adding to his tally by relentlessly chasing points at intermediate sprints. 

That was the only viable path to points classification victory for the versatile Pedersen. He may be a rapid finisher, but he knew he didn’t have the pure speed to win bunch sprints against the likes of Tim Merlier, and that is borne out by his sequence of results on this Tour – Foix remains his lone top-five finish.

Pedersen’s path to victory was complicated by the Tour’s decision to increase the points on offer on the flat stages, a tweak seemingly introduced to Pogacar-proof the competition. It also tilted the scales in favour of the pure sprinters and away from Pedersen. 

He caught a break, however, when Tim Merlier (Soudal Quick-Step), a man with no real green jersey ambitions, proved the Tour’s fastest finisher. Philipsen, meanwhile, was suffering misfire after misfire in the bunch sprints, with third places in Nevers and Chalon-sur-Saône all he had to show for his efforts. 

It all meant that Pedersen’s daily targeting of the intermediate sprint was helping to shore up his advantage in the points competition. His ability to battle his way to points even on harsh terrain put one in mind of Thor Hushovd’s successful campaigns of 2005 and 2009. 283 points from his total come from intermediate sprints, compared with 220 of Philipsen’s.

But what now? The Tour enters the Alps for three successive mountain stages, and each day the intermediate sprint lies on the wrong side of significant climbs. The points are certainly beyond the range of Philipsen and it would require something spectacular from Pedersen to increase his advantage too, particularly given the fatigue he showed in the finale on Wednesday.

Logic indicates that the race for the green jersey will come down to the final stage in Paris, where there are 25 points on offer at the intermediate sprint and 50 points available to the winner.

In the traditional Tour finale, the odds would be stacked in Philipsen’s favour, but the insertion of the climb to Montmartre clouds the picture, partly because Pedersen is better equipped to withstand the ascent, but also because it offers Van der Poel a chance to chase a prestigious stage win.

Van der Poel’s ambitions and Alpecin-Deceuninck’s strategy will thus weigh heavily on the green jersey contest. Pedersen is still the logical favourite for green, but much depends on Van der Poel’s approach. If he is free to race for victory on Montmartre, then it plays into Pedersen’s hands, but if he is deployed in a defensive role, the dynamic changes completely.

Van der Poel has always been a most willing wingman for Philipsen on sprint days, but will he be prepared to sacrifice his own shot at Champs-Élysées glory? That question might decide the green jersey.