{"id":687185,"date":"2026-07-12T05:53:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T05:53:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687185\/"},"modified":"2026-07-12T05:53:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T05:53:12","slug":"jasper-philipsen-is-running-out-of-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/687185\/","title":{"rendered":"Jasper Philipsen is running out of road"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jasper<\/p>\n

Tour de France<\/a><\/p>\n

After a second straight sprint finish out of the picture, the Alpecin star had nothing to say \u2013 and maybe that says enough.<\/p>\n

\"Iain<\/p>\n

Jasper Philipsen rolled to the Alpecin-Premier Tech bus, in shimmering heat on the outskirts of Bergerac, and in grim silence he dismounted. No swearing; no tempestuous helmet tosses, like we\u2019d heard about yesterday. But after finishing a second successive stage of the Tour de France some way off the pace, there were some little tells that Philipsen was displeased, like the terse lift up of the saddle and slam of the rear of the bike. Not a bike-smash, but let\u2019s say the kind of move that, if you did it to your own bike, you\u2019d probably have a shame-tinged moment afterward of, “Oh, I feel a bit bad for my bike that I did that.”<\/p>\n

The last two stages of the Tour de France have been nailed-on sprint stages, and Jasper Philipsen is a top sprinter with one of this generation\u2019s greatest talents \u2013 Mathieu van der Poel \u2013 riding in his service. On Friday’s stage 7, Philipsen finished fifth. Saturday, fourth. His former teammate, Tim Merlier, won both. Philipsen\u2019s results show a kind of progress, one place at a time, but for sprinters like these, that\u2019s not enough to move the needle. The heat doesn\u2019t help, but the coronation of Merlier as this Tour\u2019s sprinter du jour is probably the more pressing concern. So how do you get out of that rut?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A mostly Belgian press pack waited for Philipsen \u2013 maybe in the hope of quotes, maybe in the hope of some colour. He didn\u2019t provide too much of either: after the 6.5\/10 physical expression of his disappointment, Philipsen vanished into Alpecin’s elegantly-outfitted adjacent ice-bath vehicle. Not for an ice bath, for an escape. A staff-member with a blue clipboard followed, as a kind of emotional-support person. We waited, listening for yells, watching for helmets.<\/p>\n

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\n Tour de France<\/a>
\n Jasper Philipsen<\/a>
\n News & Racing<\/a>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tour de France After a second straight sprint finish out of the picture, the Alpecin star had nothing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687186,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4985,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-687185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-cycling","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687185\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}