Tim Merlier takes stage 3 sprint at 2025 Tour de France as Jasper Philipsen abandons and Remco Evenepoel goes down on crash marred day

Tim Merlier has sprinted to the win from the bunch on stage 3 of the 2025 Tour de France, on a dramatic day that saw the sad abandon of the Green Jersey Jasper Philipsen after a crash, and Remco Evenepoel was caught up in a late incident himself.

With this stage having a bunch sprint finish written all over it, there was a distinct lack of interest in going up the road and forming the breakaway. In fact, both Jonas Rickaert and Matej Mohoric found themselves on the attack early, but both almost immediately pulled the safety chord and waited up for the peloton. As a result, there was a somewhat relaxed feel to the racing, with the peloton having nothing to chase up front.

It wasn't until the intermediate sprint inside the final 60km that the race sparked into life. Sadly, this rise in tension levels had a victim too as the Green Jersey and stage 1 winner Jasper Philipsen crashed hard and was forced to abandon the race.

As the sprint line neared however, the argy-bargy at the front of the bunch began to step up a level and after coming into contact with Bryan Coquard, Philpsen was sent violently down to the ground. With his Green Jersey torn to shreds and the Belgian seemingly having broken his collarbone, his teammates who had stopped to support him, were told to get back on his bike and sent back off up the road and Philpsen was moved to the road side where he received the necessary medical attention.

Although it was somewhat secondary given what happened behind, Jonathan Milan took maximum points at the sprint, signalling his intention ahead of the finale.

As things calmed down again considerably after that flashpoint, the point of note came at around 37km to go when UAE Team Emirates - XRG's Belgian national champion Tim Wellens drifted off the front of the peloton.

Picking up the sole King of the Mountains point on offer at the Cat 4 Mont Cassel, Wellens levelled up with his team leader Tadej Pogacar at the top of the KoM standings, with UAE on team radio convinced the Belgian would be wearing polka-dots on stage 4. Moments later, Wellens stopped his solo attack and began to wait for the peloton to catch him.

With Wellens safely back in the bunch, a basically full peloton rolled into the final 10km of the day all together. From there, the sprint trains took over in preparation for the bunch sprint finale.

Inside the final 3km, half of the peloton was then slowed up as a crash took down Jordie Meeus, Remco Evenepoel, Geraint Thomas and more. Notably, there would be not time gaps as a result of this incident.

At the front meanwhile, there was a stage win up for grabs, and in the sprint for the line there was yet another crash in the final few hundred metres before Tim Merlier just edged Jonathan Milan in a photo finish.