Epic Breakaway day! 😮‍💨 | Men's Tour de France Stage 17 Race Highlights

Bonjour and bienvenue. Welcome to Chambéry where in 1989 Greg Le Mans and Johnny Longo took home the rainbow jerseys. It's stage 17 of the Tour de France. We're making our way to Voiront with of course today Bogotcha there in the yellow jersey. This is today's course. We've got four categorized climbs. They all come in the first 50 kilometers of the race and then with a total of 2200 meters of elevation. Most of our team is suited for a stage like this so let's try and play our numbers game that we have a lot of guys going for it today and then hopefully we can get as many guys in the break to to fight for the victory. I've been feeling good at the end of a second week and I've basically had two rest days so hopefully that does the positive way because we also could see some guys who are not really where the body shuts down. And to finish according to your experience how much you see possible a bunch sprint today? Very unlikely. It's not a guarantee but with a nice result today it it would be it would be really good to add some points in the jersey and then yeah it would be nice to seal it before Paris but it's still a big fight. The ideal scenario do you expect to break away or reduce bunch sprint? Potato, potato. For me it can be both as long as I'm not sprinting against Jasper and Bini then it's all good. You're 31 points down in the green jersey standing. How desperate is this chase to Mads? Yeah we just try to to collect points along the way and see if it's enough or not but yeah the fight is there until Paris let's hope but today will be crucial. It was a crucial day for the green jersey. It was also a rather chaotic day because only nine teams so far have won a stage out of the 23 teams that were at the start. We have a first group and Mads Pedersen there in the green jersey is struggling on the Col des Prix where Egan Bernal is at the front of that first group. We spot Tijs Benoet also Mathieu van der Poel. A rather sizable group across the top but gaps at this point are rather small. It was especially Di Cablon who managed to bring the group back into contention as we have a little bit of an attack there by Josh Tarling. The peloton however they were waiting for this group here. A group with the man in the green jersey Nes Pedersen but more importantly the man in the white jersey the number three on GC Isaac del Toro. The groups would come back together. William Gremaille was not so lucky at this point because he was almost three minutes back. Mohoric, Simmonds, Tarling, van der Poel, Bernal, Engelhardt. It's a rather sizable group here and yeah thanks to the work of Di Cablon, CMS, CGM, the team of stage winner Olaf Kooij. The gap is down to around 21 seconds and that is the queue for Nes Pedersen to try and bridge across because we have that intermediate sprint coming up in 37 kilometers from now. He easily manages to bridge across. Jasper Philipsen stays behind in the peloton and that means there is an opportunity for Nes Pedersen to take a 25 points while potentially Jasper Philipsen takes none. He goes on the attack yet again with Edward Planck out there with Kwiatkowski, Healy, Engelhardt and also Jasper Stuyve are joining him at the front on our way to that intermediate sprint It was a rough day for Adam Yates. He dropped back from the peloton. Luckily for him, Tim Wellens' T-bait also dropped back and managed to get Yates across the finish line well within the time cut. This is that intermediate sprint in Colombo, easily won by Pedersen but the groups behind got together and that means that Jasper Philipsen gets to win the sprint of the chasing group, still picking up eight points. It was a queue for Jasper Stuyve to attack all by himself. We're at about 27 kilometers from the line. It's a rather ambitious goal but this man has won races solo and we might remember that one in Milan Sanremo five years ago. His last win actually for Jasper Stuyve. Kwiatkowski is there, Healy is there, Engelhardt, Pedersen and Planck out but everything comes back together apart from the lone Belgian at the front. The first part of the 25 kilometers to the finish line for Stuyve was in a downhill but then he's going to encounter two categorized climbs and the last one, uncategorized climbs I should say, and the last one, two and a half kilometers, four percent is just one too many for the Soudal quick-step rider. He's going to get caught just after the banner of four kilometers to go with Pablo Castrillo bringing this group back. We've got some fast sprinters here with Pedersen, with Philipsen, with Hoop Aerts, also Matthews is out there, Rik Klomers is out there as well as Aaron Gate but the Vismalisa bike guys who are after stage wins at the moment are going on the attack here with Pest and Antagonis. Top of the climb here, around two kilometers to go and then inside the final kilometer an attack by Josh Tarling, Schmid on his wheel, we are going to have a very exciting sprint here in Voisel. But it's Mauro Schmid trying to keep the pace up and now Van der Poel starts the lead out, 250 meters to go, they're going to have a real go. Gate coming from a long way behind but this is a perfect lead out, it's an armchair ride, here comes Jasper Philipsen, Philipsen at the front, Philipsen there, Philipsen still ahead, they try, they chase, they can't and finally it's Philipsen at the Tour de France. And that means for five consecutive years now Jasper Philipsen has won a stage but he had to wait 17 stages to do it, after a phenomenal lead out there by Mathieu Van der Poel. And that means that the battle for the green jersey is wide open because Jasper Philipsen wins the stage and Mess Pedersen is only eighth. Schmid, Koi, Aski, Klomers, Rousseau, Pedersen, Matthews, Arengate, that is the top 10 in Voiron. UET members coming home almost nine minutes down and that means that they are losing around 18 minutes in the team classification as well. No problems whatsoever for Tadej Pogacar, he still has four and a half minutes on Evenepoel, the difference between Del Toro and Zigzas is only 20 seconds and that is the battle for the podium and for the white jersey. But another battle is wide open after today, this morning the gap between Pedersen and Philipsen was at 31 points and due to that phenomenal stage win by Jasper Philipsen picking up 50 points, the gap is now only seven points between the Danish rider and the Belgian. Many good emotions with the Tour, just all kind of emotions in a good way and a bad way but yeah it's a victory definitely I will remember a long time and yeah I'm just really happy with the team that they keep on believing that they were there in the final and also with Mathieu, he just delivered me again perfectly so yeah it's definitely one for them as well. Almost shows when the pressure is off Jasper Philipsen, he seems a little bit more free and that was clearly proven today and the fact that Mathieu van der Poel was so committed once again with another extraordinary lead out. Yes but the fact that he is not there when Pedersen sprints for the intermediate, that was not strong from him let's say. If he would have been there then he had the green already today. Jasper Stuyven, I don't think you can have any regrets today actually you played your car to perfection I guess. Almost perfection. Yeah but simply they came back too quick for a man alone in the front but the move you did was quite smart. Yeah I think with the group coming back on my group that I was in of course that gives the big organization and yeah more power to bring me back. Probably **** day. This shouldn't happen and yeah it's really disappointing to lose at many points so yeah I don't know what to say. Do you have any regrets from the stage? Yeah I don't know maybe we should have let the big group go but it also looked like you know Decathlon wanted to close it for a sprint so right now I don't know what what we could have changed you know I scored the maximum points on the intermediate. The group didn't want to work really well and yeah the sprint was just not good enough and Jasper was incredibly strong so all in all a super disappointing day. I was good going into sort of 2k to go and then got swamped from behind and yeah just completely messed up messed up my sprint and yeah we were quite lucky that Mauro was still in good position to run second on the stage. Maybe there should be more stages like this it gives an opportunity to more riders than just the best rider in the world. So yeah I hope everyone enjoyed the show today. I had a lot of fun and already looking forward to the next one. And then stage 18 the first of three very hard stages here in the Alps. Start in Voiron. We've got five categorized climbs. Mountaintop finish in Orcières-Merlet and almost 4,000 meters of climbing and yet again in the Tour de France. Today it belonged to Jasper Philipsen. Tomorrow it's up to the GC guys again.