Stage 17

The road

At the start

The green jersey's last open road

Evenepoel's time trial pulled him to within 4:32 of Pogačar, but it cost Red Bull their other card: Florian Lipowitz crashed out of the stage and is gone. With three mountain days and a cobbled Montmartre left, this is the last stage the fast men can shape, and Mads Pedersen leads Jasper Philipsen by thirty-one points. The first fifty kilometres out of Savoie climb almost without a break.

How it was won

1. 1161 km to go

   The green jersey polices the front

   Lidl-Trek have circled this stage for weeks, and on the Côte de Bassa Pedersen personally mows down Vauquelin and Tarling's escape attempt. The mayhem brings down Pidcock and Lenny Martinez, both quickly back up.

2. 2131 km to go

   Van der Poel tries, Pedersen answers

   On the longest climb of the day Van der Poel tries to pull a group away over the Col des Prés, and once again it is the man in green who does the work to bring it all back.

3. 3121 km to go

   Sixteen slip the leash

   Saint-Jean-d'Arvey splits the peloton with Del Toro on the wrong side, and after the regroup the race explodes again on an uncategorised climb: sixteen riders go clear without Pedersen or any of his green-jersey rivals.

4. 465 km to go

   Pedersen throws himself across

   With the gap down to twenty seconds the green jersey launches a huge attack and takes ten riders with him — Kooij among them — leaving Philipsen stranded in a chase group of fourteen with 65km still to race.

5. 533 km to go

   Twenty-five points, uncontested

   Pedersen splits the leaders again and, with Healy, Kwiatkowski, Stuyven, Planckaert and Engelhardt riding for him, arrives at Colombe a minute clear. He takes the full 25 points; Philipsen scrapes seven from the chase.

6. 64 km to go

   Stuyven caught at the last

   Pedersen eases and lets the Philipsen group back on, gambling on the uphill run to Voiron. Stuyven's solo bid holds twenty seconds into the final 5km before the unnamed rise reels him in with 3.7km to go.

7. 7At the line

   Van der Poel launches Philipsen

   Simmons drives for Pedersen, but Alpecin have the secret weapon: Van der Poel surges out of the final turn and Philipsen goes with him. The Belgian waltzes away for the win he has waited seventeen stages for, and cuts the green jersey deficit to seven points.

The result