Bennett fourth as Philipsen sprints to stage 16 win

Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck sprinted to victory on Tuesday’s 16th stage of the Tour de France, a 189 km flat ride from Gruissan to Nimes, with Ireland’s Sam Bennett crossing the finishing line fourth.

The win was Philipsen’s third on the Tour this year while green jersey holder Biniam Girmay crashed with less than 2km left.

Bennett of team Decathlon-AG2R-La Mondiale moves up to 13th in the green jersey standings following that race placing which earned him an 18-point haul and has now amassed 91 overall, 21 points outside the top 10 in the points classification.

The Carrick-on-Suir native won the green jersey at the 2020 Tour de France.

Ben Healy, meanwhile, remains 13th overall in the general classification, 29.26 minutes behind yellow jersey holder Tadej Pogacar, who now has an overall lead of three minutes and nine seconds over Jonas Vingegaard, while Remco Evenepoel remains over five minutes behind.

Alpecin-Deceuninck controlled the sprint as the riders moved up to the front to set up the victory for Philipsen and it worked to perfection as Mathieu Van der Poel’s textbook lead-out allowed his Belgian teammate to win comfortably.

“I’m really happy after such a team effort. It’s always nice when you can win together and that’s what we did today, definitely,” Philipsen said.

“I didn’t see the crash (involving Girmay). We were trying to position ourselves and focus on our own lead-out. I hope everyone is OK.

“I was feeling good, I had a good rest day (on Monday), my shape improved during the Tour. So I was confident if we could line it up good today, we could go for the win. It’s a difficult level, so three wins is good. We can be proud.”

Philipsen crossed the line ahead of Phil Bauhaus, Alex Kristoff and Bennett.

Girmay eventually got back on his bike as his team-mates helped him across the line. But the Eritrean saw his lead in the sprint standings reduced to 32 points.

While there are no more flat stages on the Tour, the green jersey is still very much up for grabs with intermediate sprints in the next five stages.

“Everything is possible. He (Girmay) is climbing really well,” Philipsen added.

“I hope he’s OK after the crash because he doesn’t deserve to lose like this. I will try whatever I can because the hard stages are to come.”

Britain’s Mark Cavendish, who has won a record 35 stages on the Tour in his career, finished 17th in potentially his final sprint stage.

Wednesday’s stage 17 is a 178 km ride from Saint-Paul-Trois-Chateaux to Superdevoluy.

Additional reporting: Reuters