"Having the green jersey resigned is no fun": Bryan Coquard's emotion after his collision with Jasper Philipsen

It was completely calm. For three hours on Monday, July 7, the Tour de France peloton had been riding at an average speed of less than 40 km/h, almost like cycling for the best riders in the world, in this third stage between Valenciennes and Dunkirk. And suddenly, everything changed. During an innocuous intermediate sprint, 60 kilometers from the finish, Laurenz Rex and Bryan Coquard accelerated shoulder to shoulder. The Frenchman took off his shoes, moved to his left, and mowed down Jasper Philipsen .

The green jersey flew. He found himself thrown to the ground, his right shoulder forward, at 60 km/h. Jasper the Disaster, a nickname given by former teammates to describe his carelessness, could do little to avoid the crash. The first yellow jersey of this 2025 edition and winner of the inaugural stage retired a few minutes later.

"Jasper and I had the mission to win stages and the green jersey is a huge loss," reacted Mathieu van der Poel, his teammate at Alpecin-Deceuninck. The stage was marked by other crashes, notably in the final sprint. "A lot of riders were still fresh because of the headwind and it's much easier to come back from behind," Van der Poel analyzed. "A lot of sprinters were still there and fought for the victory. It created a chaotic finale."

Among the victims of the violent crash in the final kilometer: Bryan Coquard. His face scarred and his shorts torn, he appeared before a forest of microphones at the foot of his team bus. "Bad day. You can imagine that having the green jersey abandoned is not a pleasant feeling," he began. " I want to apologize to Philipsen even if it was not intentional: I'm not a bad guy, a bad boy." A shadow passes over his gaze, his eyes mist over. " He's a good person," he says of the Belgian, through a sob.

The portrait

Bryan Coquard also tried to understand the sequence of events, having taken the time to review the images before appearing before the press. "At the time, I don't know what happened. Maybe my front wheel touched the derailleur in Milan, maybe Rex threw me off balance... I lost the pedal in the shoe, I practically lost the shoe." He didn't fall, but he dragged Philipsen to the ground. A few dozen kilometers later, Coquard would nevertheless violently crash to the ground in turn. "I had remobilized to make the final sprint, there was another fall, that's it..." And at the finish, a doping control awaited him; the French sprinter was one of the daily draws. Definitely, a very long day.