Some stories are turned right on their head in the final few lines – Atonement Ewan McGregor being a classic example.
And so it was with stage 17 in the Tour de France, when Lidl Trek‘s Mads Pedersen‘s grip on the green jersey, which looked like it was going to be utterly unbreakable for most of the day, was dramatically loosened by an extraordinary fight back from Jasper Philipsen, who secured his first victory of the 2026 Tour, helped by a team effort from the Alpecin-Premier Tech squad.
After yesterday, Pedersen had a 31-point lead in the points classification, and he rode aggressively all day, being named the most combative rider of the day for his dogged refusal not to be part of any group that tried to escape and extending his lead at the intermediate sprint.
But after Philipsen was launched into the finish straight by Mathieu van der Poel, to take a memorable victory in Voiron and bagging 50 points in the process, the gap was slashed to seven.
“It was a proper s**t day,” Pedersen said at the finish. “Super disappointed I didn’t get the job done. It’s a big loss of points. But it is what it is, we just have to deal with the situation.”
The mood at the Lidl Trek bus was equally downbeat. “It’s tight,” conceded Kim Andersen, the team’s sports director, when Cycling Weekly caught up with him. “He has to pick up some points. Of course, he was hoping for more, but it is like it is. It was a good fight. He’s still in front, so…
“I think we didn’t calculate that others would help them out, because if it was just Philipsen it would have been okay, just Alpecin in it, things would have been okay,” he continued. “But now it gets a bit tight.”
Philipsen, buoyed though he might be by the result, cannily played down his chances of taking the green jersey. “It’ll be very hard,” he said in the press conference after the stage. “He [Pedersen] also took 25 points in the intermediate today. He was in front, so he made it very hard.
“The next three days are very tough with the intermediate, the chance I will not be there is pretty high. Pedersen is climbing well so he can gain some points again. We will see where we are in Paris on Sunday, and we’ll see what’s possible.”
What is for sure, is that in a race that some people have said lacks unpredictability and drama, due to the undeniable dominance of Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG), the story of who takes home the green jersey this year still promises a few twists.
Jasper Philipsen achieved atonement for his finish-line loss to Ben Turner here in Voiron during the 2025 Vuelta Espana, but will it be enough to propel him to victory in the race for the green jersey in the 2026 Tour de France? We may have to wait until the final page and the much-anticipated Parisian stage to find out.
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