Tour de France 2023, Kasper Asgreen wins 18th stage
Tour de France 2023, Kasper Asgreen wins 18th stage
It surprisingly goes to Kasper Asgreen, a specialist in the one-day classics, the eighteenth stage of the Tour de France, the 184.9-kilometer Moutiers-Bourg en Bresse, with only two fourth-category cotes as climbs, so in theory favorable to sprinters.
But disrupting their plans, particularly those of Jasper Philipsen, the Belgian who has already triumphed in four stages of this Grande Boucle, were the 28-year-old Dane from Soudal Quick Step, winner of the 2021 Tour of Flanders and second in the 2019 Tour of Flanders, and his three breakaway companions: Dutchman Pascal Eenkhoorn of Lotto Dstny and Norwegian Jonas Abrahamsen of Uno-X Pro Cycling Team, who finished right behind him, and Belgian Victor Campenaerts, also of Lotto Dstny and the author of the decisive thrust in the last kilometer that allowed the escapees to narrowly hold off the furious comeback of the peloton.
Campenaerts was sucked into the peloton in the last meters but the other three held on and it was Philipsen himself who finished fourth with the same time as them, as there was less than a second between him and Abrahamsen. For Asgreen it is the first stage win between Giro, Tour and Vuelta.
The general classification is unchanged, with the other Dane Jonas Vingegaard in the yellow jersey with a 7’35” lead over Slovenian Tadej Pogacar and 10’45” over Britain’s Adam Yates. Tomorrow’s nineteenth stage, the 172.8-kilometer Moirans en Montagne-Poligny with a fourth-category climb and a third, the Cote d’Ivory, but the latter almost 30 kilometers from the finish.
