PA Media/dpa
London
Jasper Philipsen won a chaotic opening stage of the Tour de France to take the first yellow jersey of the race on Saturday.
Philipsen took his 10th career Tour stage but the first to put him into yellow as he beat Biniam Girmay in a much-reduced bunch sprint after crosswinds split the peloton to pieces.
Overall hopefuls Remco Evenepoel and Primoz Roglic were both caught out, conceding 39 seconds to the main favourites Tadej Pogacar and Jonas Vingegaard, with the Dane having done much to instigate the splits inside the last 20 kilometres of the 185km stage that started and finished in Lille.
Fewer than 40 riders made it into the front group but Philipsen’s Alpecin-Deceuninck team had four of them and they made it count, putting together an ideal lead-out for Philipsen to comfortably beat Girmay and Soren Waerenshjold to the line.
“It’s really amazing,” the Belgian said. “My 10th victory is something I will never forget. The team performance was incredible. I think we were there all day. It was very nervous but we knew today could be our day and we have to be in the front and we were there in the split.
“The team did amazing and in the end we could just use our strength and finish it off.
“I have dreamt about (the yellow jersey). Already I had the green jersey from two years ago but to have the yellow jersey hanging somewhere in my house in the next years is going to be amazing.”
