Jasper Philipsen accuses motorbikes of negatively influencing race: "Tell them that the motorbikes have already decided the race twice"

Jasper Philipsen fell short for the second day in a row against a group of three on Friday, so that the Belgian was no more than fourth. Immediately afterwards, this caused some frustration, but that had subsided a bit later.

"Tell them that the motorbikes have already decided the race twice," the sprinter grumbled afterwards. He stopped by at Sporza's a little later when the adrenaline had already dropped a bit. "Forget about the motorbikes, I'm not going to comment that now. We rode full throttle and didn't come a meter shorter, so they must have been very strong," said the Belgian with a notch of irony in his voice.

All in all, Philipsen looked back on a 'tough day' with companion Mathieu van der Poel in the leading group. "I'm going to have to get over it. Mathieu certainly had the chance to go clear and I would have liked to give something back to him, but in the end we got into a chase group and then I took the points. The goal was the stage and I would have liked to have won it with Mathieu. I now have the green jersey in my pocket, but we first have to cross the Vosges."

Sports director Bart Leysen drew the same conclusions. "Our riders were where they should have been. There was a strong group behind those three, but they were probably a bit stronger," with which he also didn't want to say much about the possible influence of motorbikes. "If so, the jury must intervene. We can't help that."