Jasper Philipsen defeated but with admiration for Mark Cavendish: "He is a deserved winner. Cavendish is making it happen here"

Jasper Philipsen was the great dominator of the sprints at the 2023 Tour de France but has not had his way over the first two sprints of the 2024 race. This Wednesday he was beaten by Mark Cavendish.

"It was a very nervous sprint and I was a bit boxed in for a while," Philipsen said in a post-race interview with Sporza. It was a calm day on the bike and Alpecin-Deceuninck avoided the mishaps that took them out of contention on stage 3 into Torino. There, Mathieu van der Poel crashed and wasn't able to participate in the leadout of the Belgian sprinter; but Philipsen himself then was involved in the mass crash and was unable to contest for the sprint. Now they both made it through, but the luxury leadout was only able to leave Philipsen in the wheel of Mark Cavendish into the final sprint.

The Alpecin-Deceuninck had good legs on the day and good positioning. Into a headwind sprint, he was the main contender to take the stage win but he saw himself against the best sprinter of the past 15 years. What happened was that Philipsen also found himself not being able to overcome Mark Cavendish. It was a very powerful sprint from the Manx Missile and Philipsen, despite his top speed, was not able to take the stage win.

"But he is a deserved winner. Cavendish is making it happen here, that's the most important news of the day," Philipsen admits. "He's sprinting for the win here, great for him', he concludes with praise." Nevertheless it was not a waste of a day for Philipsen who climbed up the ranks in the points classification. Up from eighth to fourth, he now has 78 points. He is behind Biniam Girmay (104 points), Mads Pedersen (94 points) and Jonas Abrahmsen (87 points).