TOUR DE FRANCE 2023 – STAGE 3
AMOREBIETA-ETXANO – BAYONNE

1+1: HE IS *THE* SPRINTER!
Jasper Philipsen won the last sprint of the Tour 2022 (Champs-Élysées) and the first of the Tour 2023 (Bayonne), an unprecedented back-to-back since Marcel Kittel in 2013 (stage 21, Champs-Élysées) and 2014 (stage 1, Harrogate). This back to back led him to a very successful Tour with 4 wins in 2014.

73,3 KM/H: CAVENDISH FASTER THAN PHILIPSEN
Led by Mathieu van der Poel, Jasper Philipsen delivered a powerful sprint to the line with an average speed of 67.0km/h in the final kilometre and a maximum of 71.2km/h.
Sprint icon Mark Cavendish went even faster, hitting the maximum speed recorded by NTT Data in the last kilometre: 73.3km/h.
With these legs, the Manx missile is aiming for a record 35th stage win in the Tour…

50X150: A PELOTON OF ROUND NUMBERS
After Victor Lafay yesterday took the number of winners in this Tour at 50, today we didn’t have a new winner, but Jasper Philipsen took the total of stage wins of this peloton to 150.
The most successful are:
• Mark Cavendish 34 (joint all-time record with Eddy Merckx)
• Peter Sagan 12
• Wout van Aert and Tadej Pogacar 9
• Julian Alaphilippe 6

30: PHILIPSEN HITS 30
Jasper Philipsen posted his 3rd Tour win after Carcassonne and Paris last year.
Philipsen goes up to 30 professional wins, 14 of these being World Tour wins. This year he has won 7 times already: two Tirreno-Adriatico stages, plus the Classic Brugge-De Panne in March, the Scheldeprijs in April; the Elfstedenronde – Brugge and the 1st stage of the Belgium Tour in June.

80: GREEN LEADER
Victor Lafay holds on to the green jersey with 80 points, the same tally as Philipsen’s, and also the same tally as Julian Alaphilippe after the 3rd stage of the 2021 Tour, which was the last time a Frenchman led the points standings before Lafay this year.

3: A HAT-TRICK OF YELLOWS
Adam Yates is the first rider in Yellow in the first three stages since 2017 when his compatriot Geraint Thomas was the leader in the first four, before leaving it to another Briton, Chris Froome, after the 5th stage (La Planche Des Belles Filles).
Yates counts now 7 yellow jerseys. Among this Tour’s entrants, only three riders claimed more:
• Tadej Pogacar (21)
• Julian Alaphilippe (18)
• Jonas Vingegaard (11)

18: POWLESS AMASSING MOUNTAIN POINTS
Since the scale of the KOM standings changed in 2017, only one rider has amassed more points than Neilson Powless in the first 3 stages: Benoît Cosnefroy, 21 points in 2020.
It illustrates the American rider’s dominance in this competition and the toughness of these first 3 stages, featuring two cat-2 ascents.
Leaders of the KOM standings after 3 stages:
• 2017 – Nathan Brown, 3 pts
• 2018 – Dion Smith, 1 pt
• 2019 – Tim Wellens, 7 pts
• 2020 – Benoît Cosnefroy, 21 pts
• 2021 – Ide Schelling, 5 pts
• 2022 – Magnus Cort, 6 pts
• 2023 – Neilson Powless 18 pts

3: POWLESS CLAIMS THE RECORD!
Neilson Powless claims the U.S. record of polka-dot jerseys at the Tour: no one from the United States had been able to reach 3 polka-dot jerseys. Nathan Brown in 2017 stopped at 2.
The first polka-dot going to a U.S. rider was in the famous Alpe d’Huez stage of the 1986 Tour. After finishing 2nd, hand in hand with his team-mate Bernard Hinault, Greg LeMond was the first American who conquered the polka-dot jersey…but didn’t take it to the race as he was in yellow the next day!
Then, a long wait ensued for the U.S. until Tejay Van Garderen claimed it in Super-Besse in 2011. Then Taylor Phinney (Liege 2017) and the aforementioned Brown.

11: EWAN BACK IN THE TOP-THREE
Caleb Ewan is at his 11th top-3 placement at the Tour: 5 wins, 2 second places, 4 third places. This is his first podium result since he won in Poitiers on the 9th of September, 2020.

2: EARLY FORM FOR GERMANY
Phil Bauhaus claims his first podium placement at the Tour: he is the first German in the top-3 since Nils Politt, winner in Nimes in 2021 (stage 12).
The last German sprinter to finish among the top-3 so early in the Tour had been Marcel Kittel, 3rd in the 1st stage of 2018.
Curiously, Bauhaus only other top-3 placement in a Grand Tour stage is another 2nd place, at the Giro d’Italia, in Cuneo last year.