Tour of Turkey (Turkey) - Press Release: After three near misses, Jasper Philipsen (Alpecin-Fenix) managed to beat André Greipel (Israel Start-Up Nation), Kristoffer Halvorsen (UnoX) and arch-favourite Mark Cavendish (Deceuninck-Quick Step) in a bunch gallop under the bright sunshine in Marmaris.

“For sure I was very disappointed with the three second places”, Philipsen reacted. “Everything just had to fall on a good place if I didn’t make any mistake in the sprint. I’m super happy to finally win here in Turkey. We had to change our tactic a little bit. As we lost three guys, I didn’t have a full lead out. I had to count a little bit on other teams. In the last 5km, my chain fell off the ring. After that I had to push a lot more watts to keep the speed going. I was almost sure I wasn’t able to win the sprint but I could follow the good wheels and I managed to sprint. I was happy that Greipel opened up. Otherwise it would have been impossible for me to win. To win a stage here after the Scheldeprijs is also very good. Let’s hope we make it an even better week the next two days. Yesterday we all knew that our new team-mate Jay Vine has capacities for climbing but the actual racing was something different. He showed his real potential. Maybe we can help him get some seconds on the road to win the TUR overall.”