Tour de France 2023: Huge upset as Kasper Asgreen wins from breakaway on Stage 18 to deny sprinters

Updated 20/07/2023 at 17:41 GMT

The sprinters' reward for surviving the mountains? Having the best seats in the house to watch the breakaway take a surprise victory on Stage 18. Kasper Asgreen ended Soudal-QuickStep's hunt for a victory at the 2023 Tour after proving the quickest from a brave quartet of escapees, while Jonas Vingegaard stayed upright to leave him just three stages away from a second overall title.

Stage 18 highlights – Asgreen takes shock win as breakaway holds off bunch

On the Tour de France sometimes the impossible happens. Not Jonas Vingegaard losing grip of the yellow jersey four days from Paris – that was never going to happen in a flat transitional Stage 18 to Bourg-en-Bresse – but how about a four-man breakaway holding the peloton at bay to deny the sprinters a gilt-edge opportunity to fight for the win.

Against all odds, Denmark’s Kasper Asgreen (Soudal-QuickStep) emerged victorious but will owe his win in large part to an almighty pull by fellow escapee Victor Campenaerts (Lotto Dstny) on the home straight with the peloton breathing down the neck of the leading quartet.

Campenaert’s team-mate Pascal Eenkhoorn – a late addition to the break after bridging over with around 60km remaining of the 185km stage – went shoulder-to-shoulder with Asgreen but could only take second place ahead of Norway’s Jonas Abrahamsen (Uno-X), as Belgium’s Campenaerts was swallowed up by the marauding pack behind.

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The green jersey Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Deceuninck) outkicked his rival sprinters once again – but only for fourth place and not the fifth stage win the Belgian hoped to pick up after the gruelling Alpine chapter of this race.

Philipsen earlier displayed some green mist in blocking an attempt by Eenkhoorn to bridge over to the breakaway on the second of two fourth-category climbs – the sprinter unwisely taking matters into his own hands in an unsavoury display of bully-boy tactics that, eventually, did not pay off.

With the advantage of the trio down to just 30 seconds, the Dutchman later attacked for a second time – and this time he managed to make it over once team-mate Campenaerts dropped back to lend a hand. The additional firepower was what made the difference for a move that had formed right from the start of the stage outside Moutiers.

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“We had a good understanding with each other so we decided to take it very easy,” Campenaerts later said, claiming the peloton did “not play it very smart” by keeping the gap at one minute for most of the stage.

“It made it possible for riders to jump across and that was exactly our tactic – we sent Pascal across, and from that moment we said, ‘Now, let’s go!’ We succeeded to stay out, but we didn’t win.”

Campenaerts said he was “grinding the biggest gear I could fine – I just couldn’t keep it long enough,” adding with a wry smile that he cramped up in what he described was a “horrible” finale.

Tour de France Stage 18 recap: Asgreen the surprise winner as break goes the distance

Asgreen’s victory was his first on the Tour de France after twice previously coming second – in 2019 and 2021. It also delivered a belated first win for a Soudal-QuickStep team that has suffered since sprinter Fabio Jakobsen crashed early on in the race before withdrawing in the second week.

The advantage of the breakaway never went much above 1’15” as the teams of the sprinters kept the three – then four – men on a tight leash. But once Eenkhoorn finally managed to join the move, the quartet had fresh impetus and were able to put in a collective time trial to the finish.

The Alpecin-Deceuninck, Jayco-AlUla and DSM-firmenich teams of sprinters Philipsen, Dylan Groenewegen and Sam Welsford combined well to keep the gap to a minimum. But when push came to shove, even the addition of Mads Pedersen’s Lidl-Trek and Biniam Girmay’s Intermarche-Circus-Wanty did little to dampen the drive of the quartet.

A technical finish with many roundabouts and turns certainly played into the hands of the escapees – although a monster pull by Nils Politt of Bora-hansgrohe, working for sprinter Jordi Meeus, reduced the gap to just five seconds to set up a champagne finale in the last kilometre.

It looked like curtains for the break until Campenaerts buried himself on the front with a last-ditch effort that denied the chasing sprinters – but gave rival Asgreen a morale-boosting win.

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“Obviously, the situation was not ideal – I would have preferred to have gone with six, seven or eight riders,” an ecstatic Asgreen said. “But it’s also the last week of the Tour and we’re coming off some really, really, really hard weeks – and we’ve seen it before, even a really small group can manage to cheat the sprinter teams. So, I didn’t rule it out.

“It was a team time trial to the finish. I really couldn’t have done it without Pascal, Victor and Jonas. They all did an amazing job out there. To be honest, we all deserved to win with the work we put in. But I’m really happy to come away with it. It means so much."

It was the 28-year-old Danish rouleur’s first big win since a crash last year wrecked his season and dashed his Tour de France hopes in the opening week.

“With the period I had this last year since my crash in the Tour de Suisse, and having to leave the Tour de France last year. I’ve come a long way since then and to cap it off with a victory like this – I want to dedicate it to the people who helped me this last year, and to Dries [Devenyns] – it’s his last Tour and I just saw him and he was really emotional.”

Proving he was still the fastest finisher on the day his pocket was picked, Philipsen was best of the rest ahead of Denmark's Pedersen to strengthen his grip on the green jersey he has worn since the second of his four wins to date.

The Tour continues on Friday with a rolling Stage 19 that suits the breakaway far more than Thursday’s stage – ahead of the final mountainous test in the Vosges on Saturday that stands between Vingegaard and a second yellow jersey in Paris.