{"id":278219,"date":"2025-07-20T20:27:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T20:27:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278219\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T20:27:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T20:27:10","slug":"tour-de-france-alaphilippe-celebrates-on-stage-15-but-discovers-wellens-won-long-before-him-tour-de-france-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/278219\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France: Alaphilippe celebrates on stage 15 \u2026 but discovers Wellens won long before him | Tour de France 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

French stage wins in the Tour de France<\/a> are increasingly rare, so when they do happen, there are wild cele\u00adbrations. Julian Alaphilippe, the former world road race champion, raised his arms in triumph in Carcassonne, thinking he had won, only to be told seconds later that he had in fact \u00adfinished third behind two Belgians.<\/p>\n

Ahead of the crestfallen Alaphilippe, Tadej \u00adPogacar\u2019s Emirates-XRG teammate Tim Wellens took a solo win on stage\u00a015 of the Tour, well ahead of compatriot Victor Campanaerts, a teammate to Jonas Vingegaard.<\/p>\n

\u201cJulian\u2019s radio wasn\u2019t working,\u201d Alaphilippe\u2019s Tudor Pro team mana\u00adger, Raphael Meyer, said in an effort to explain his rider\u2019s ecstatic but misplaced fist pump. A win from the French rider would have been all the more remarkable, given he had crashed earlier in the stage and popped back a dislocated shoulder, all on his own.<\/p>\n

Julian Alaphilippe\u2019s radio had been damaged in a crash earlier on stage 15. Photograph: Lo\u00efc Venance\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

For Vingegaard it was another stressful day on which his Visma-Lease a Bike team showed questionable strategy. They have one day good, the next bad, while Pogacar and his team remain a model of consistency.<\/p>\n

If Vingegaard\u2019s team increasingly resemble a house on fire, Pogacar\u2019s remains an impregnable fortress. In the shadow of Carcassonne\u2019s citadel the 34-year-old Wellens, already a stage winner in the Giro d\u2019Italia and the Vuelta a Espa\u00f1a, took his first Tour de France stage win.<\/p>\n

The Dane had been caught up in the same early crash in which Alaphilippe came down. Inexpli\u00adcably, as \u00adVingegaard, second \u00adoverall to Pogacar, chased to rejoin the peloton, some of his teammates, \u00adincluding Campanaerts, were at the front, forcing the pace and distancing their team leader.<\/p>\n

It took a radio intervention from Pogacar\u2019s own team car to return the goodwill shown to the Slovenian in Toulouse, after his own crash on stage 11. Finally, with 128km to race, Vingegaard and Florian Lipowitz rejoined the main group.<\/p>\n

Even the defending champion seemed bemused by what was going on around him. \u201cThere were three Visma guys, all trying to go in the break again and they had Jonas \u00adchasing at the back,\u201d Pogacar said. \u201cIt was just a weird situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Pogacar was eventually able to repay the sportsmanship shown to him four days ago, Wellens was not in\u00a0the mood to hang around and made his decisive solo move with 43km to race, on the Col de Fontbruno.<\/p>\n

The Belgian champion never looked back and pushed on into the final kilometres on the rolling roads of the Languedoc, to win by almost a minute and a half from Campanaerts.<\/p>\n

As the Tour began, Vingegaard\u2019s wife and personal manager had criticised the Visma-Lease a Bike team for failing to commit wholeheartedly to her husband\u2019s cause. On the road to Carcassonne, her fears seemed well-founded, with both Campanaerts and Wout van Aert apparently racing for the stage win.<\/p>\n

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Five smurfs encourage the riders. It was a big day for Belgium, with Belgians coming first and second. Photograph: Mosa\u2019ab Elshamy\/AP<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope he gets the full support of the team, rather than there being all sorts of different goals,\u201d Trine \u00adVingegaard Hansen said this month. \u201cIf you\u2019re also aiming for stage wins with other riders, then those resources can\u2019t be used for Jonas. You can only respect how Tadej \u00adPogacar\u2019s team handles it. When he starts a race, there\u2019s no doubt about who the leader is. Everyone knows their role. I think that\u2019s super important.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pogacar, meanwhile, despite \u00adsaying after the stage he had a slight summer cold because of the fluctuating temperatures and too much time spent in air-conditioning, never looked in trouble.<\/p>\n

As Vingegaard was pondering his teammate\u2019s motivations, Pogacar was becoming Wellens\u2019s \u00adcheerleader-in-chief. \u201cHow is he looking?\u201d he radioed his team car as Wellens progressed. \u201cHow does Tim look? You should reply: \u2018He looks\u00a0fabulous!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Monday is a rest day, while the 16th stage on Tuesday takes the peloton from Montpellier to the daunting Mont Ventoux, where Pogacar will almost certainly seek to increase his lead with a prestigious stage win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"French stage wins in the Tour de France are increasingly rare, so when they do happen, there are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,12,14],"class_list":{"0":"post-278219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-stories"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114887448631658321","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=278219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}