Asgreen thanks break teamwork for stage win
Kasper Asgreen outsprinted the chasing peloton to take victory from a breakaway on stage 18 of the Tour de France in Bourg-en-bresse.
The remaining sprint teams fell short on the 185-kilometre stage from Moutiers as a four-strong break held on by less than 50 metres, with Asgreen beating fellow escapees Pascal Eenkhoorn and Jonas Abrahamsen to take his first Tour stage win.
Jasper Philipsen, hoping to add to his four stage wins, came home in fourth. There was perhaps some karma in that, given the aggressive tactics Philipsen had used earlier in the stage when trying to block Eenkhoorn’s bid to join the breakaway.
The stage brought no changes at the top of the general classification, in which defending champion Jonas Vingegaard took an all-butunassailable 7½-minute lead over Tadej Pogacar on Wednesday.
This slightly lumpy stage offered the prospect of a break denying the sprinters if enough riders could get up the road. But with exhausted legs throughout the peloton after some punishing days in the Alps only three – Asgreen, Abrahamsen and Victor Campenaerts – got clear and were rarely given more than a minute’s lead. That short gap allowed Campenaerts’s team-mate Eenkhoorn to bridge over with 60km to go, despite being forced on to the verge by Philipsen as he tried to get away from the main bunch. Even as a quartet, the front group appeared to have little chance, but the number of teams interested in a pure sprint has been steadily diminished in this Tour. Asgreen came around Abrahamsen inside the final 100m, with the chasing Eenkhoorn unable to get on terms, earning a first stage victory of this Tour for Soudal-quick-step.
“It was a team time trial to the finish,” Asgreen said. “I really couldn’t have done it without Pascal, Victor and Jonas.
“They all did amazing out there and, to be honest, we all deserved the win with the work we put in but I’m really happy to come away with it,” the Dane added.
Before the stage, Jumbo-visma announced that Vingegaard’s team-mate Wout van Aert had left the race to return home, where his wife Sarah is expecting their second child.