Good morning and welcome to stage 17 of the 2024 Tour de France. On the ultimate day for the sprinters yesterday, Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) claimed his third victory at this yr’s Tour on stage 16 with victory into Nîmes. Philipsen beat out Phil Bauhaus (Bahrain Victorious) and Alexander Kristoff (Uno-X Mobility) to take the win and shut the hole within the factors classification to Biniam Girmay (Intermarché-Wanty), who was concerned in a crash with round 1.5km to go. The race for the inexperienced jersey had seemed all however over, nonetheless with Girmay’s crash and Philipsen’s win, the previous’s lead within the factors classification is now all the way down to 32 factors. Though there are usually not going to be any extra stage finishes for the sprinters, the intermediate sprints are going to be hotly contested between Girmay and Philipsen. On what could be very more likely to be the ultimate dash stage of his illustrious profession, Mark Cavendish was not in competition for the stage victory and was unable to copy his victory in Nîmes in 2008.
Now all consideration turns to mountains, the overall classification and doable breakaways. Stage 17 takes us 177.8km from Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux to Superdévoluy, together with a climb up the Col du Noyer, the place there are bonus seconds accessible. There’s a summit end at Superdévoluy. Tadej Pogacar (UAE Group Emirates) holds a commanding lead within the normal classification after a chic couple of days within the Pyrenees final weekend. His benefit over Jonas Vingegaard (Visma-Lease a Bike) at the moment stands at three minutes and 9 seconds, with Remco Evenepoel (Soudal-Fast Step) an extra two minutes and ten seconds again within the remaining podium place. That’s virtually sure to be the ultimate podium in Good with Joao Almeida (UAE Group Emirates) greater than 5 minutes behind Evenepoel so might we see extra dangers being taken so as to try to break Pogacar? Are you able to break Pogacar on this manner? Evenepoel did admit the opposite day he felt it was unimaginable to beat Pogacar in the mean time.
