SerpApi.Org
It's been a long time coming, but it's finally here: 17 days into the Tour de France, Jasper Philipsen managed to clinch a much-anticipated 11th Tour stage victory of his career on Wednesday. And even a hardened sprint warrior like the 28-year-old Belgian admitted that the pressure to succeed - with virtually no chances remaining before Paris, either - was beginning to get to him.
To say the expectations were high that Philipsen would at some point take a Tour stage in 2026 is no exaggeration. But in a sense he has only his own almost ridiculously good strike rate in the Tour de France to blame.
Since 2022, the Alpecin-Premier Tech fastman has taken at least one stage win per Tour, with a maximum of four victories in 2023. In 2025 it was the only year when he 'only' took one, and had he not crashed out on stage 3, it would surely have been more. It was only in 2026 when the triumphs just wouldn't arrive.
This was not for lack of trying, though. Inside the top five five times in the 2026 race before Wednesday's win, more than once the team's lead-out experts had put Philipsen in pole position to go for it. However, for whatever reason, the Belgian just wasn't firing on all cylinders, with two third places his best results prior to Wednesday, and when teammate and friend Mathieu van der Poel succeeded where Philipsen couldn't, taking a stunning breakaway sprint victory on stage 9, the contrast was even more noticeable.
That all ended on stage 17, where a lead from Van der Poel from a 40-rider group saw Philipsen claim a victory after a hugely-fraught and tactically complex race through the Alpine foothills. Given the peloton will be heading into the mountains for three days from Thursday, the technical run-in to Voiron was effectively the last chance for Philipsen barring Paris - which is far from guaranteed to end in a sprint, either thanks to the Montmarte climb. But finally Philipsen could make his opportunity count.
The Belgian star recognised afterwards that he had not found it easy to handle the anticipation within Alpecin that a win was in the offing, but he explained, too, how he tried to keep himself from getting overly worked up about it.
"Since stage 1, I'm here with a team without a GC rider, just focusing on stages, and Mathieu [van der Poel] got one already. But the team expected one from me and it hadn't happened so far," Philipsen, who has also closed in on the top spot in the points competition thanks to his win, said afterwards.
"That's been difficult to deal with, and [with] the pressure from the team. Nobody says anything, if I don't win they're not going to shoot me, but everybody knows what we're here for. There's a full lead-out squad, we're here for stage wins, there are always expectations."
He tried to cope with that weight of expectations in the time outside actual racing, he explained. "The Tour de France is everywhere, it's all Tour de France. So you try to do something that is not reading or looking at the race. Anything that has nothing to do with cycling.
"Then you just try to deliver, and deliver on the expectations that everybody has. However, if I don't have the feeling I can deliver, that increases pressure on myself, which is hard to deal with."
Why Van der Poel matters so much
Stage 17 was far from being a standard transition stage of the type Philipsen excels at winning, either. Hilly at first and then still very lumpy and technical in the second part, the race evolved into lengthy day-long battle between various different breakaway efforts, some, but not all, containing green jersey Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and runner-up Philipsen.
Matters reached a head when Pedersen formed part of a late five-rider move, chasing behind lone breakaway Jasper Stuyven (Soudal-QuickStep). Philipsen's counter-charge from a much larger group, though, also containing three Alpecin teammates - Van der Poel, Emiel Verstrynge and Edward Planckaert - finally swept up both Pedersen's five-rider break and then Stuyven with three kilometres to go. After which, matters came down to a small bunch sprint, and Philipsen had his chance to for that elusive win.
It had been touch and go throughout the day, Philipsen admitted, to the point where he only began thinking the win was possible in the last 20 kilometres.
"When we saw the Pedersen group ahead, I knew Stuyven was away as well. But I had some teammates to ride in my group, so I knew it was a golden opportunity," Philipsen explained later.
"Van der Poel is very important in all my stage wins, not just today. When he was in the first group early on, we kept control of the race because he was there, and then he was there in the final to deliver me to the last line.
"That's a big advantage we have in our team. When Van der Poel does a leadout you want to deliver, you want to win. For sure it's pressure, but not many guys have that privilege, either."
Van der Poel actually said afterwards that he had not expected to be able to do a lead out because he felt "dead", but Philipsen argued that in the third week of the Tour, the Dutch Champion was far from being the only one with that feeling.
"I think everybody was dead, and of course this was completely different to a normal sprint stage, it'd been a very hard race too. And at stage 17 the fatigue is there. I'm just happy Mathieu did what he could," Philipsen said.
The stage win is now in the bag, in any case, so the next step is to see what other goals are possible, and with just seven points now separating him and Pedersen, the 2023 Tour points winner said he would not be ruling out a late bid against the Dane to wear green again in Paris.
"It will be very hard, he also took 25 points in an intermediate sprint today and the next three days are very tough as well.
"The chances are I won't be in the next three intermediates sprints in the mountains, and Pedersen can gain some points again. But we'll still see what's possible when we get to Sunday."
If Philipsen takes green at the last minute in Paris, it'd be a hugely prestigious triumph against the odds. But come what may this weekend, his tenacious pursuit of that elusive stage win throughout the Tour, and finally being able to capture it on a stage that was far from certain to come down to a sprint, has already made his 2026 race yet another major success in his career.
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