Soudal-QuickStep’s challenging Tour de France saw an abrupt turnaround in fortunes on stage 18 when Kasper Asgreen claimed a victory that simultaneously silenced his team’s critics and provided the Dane confirmation, at the highest level possible, that after a year battling injuries, he was back in top condition.
Three weeks ago when Asgreen became Danish time trial national champion, his first win in nearly 12 months, the former Tour of Flanders champion already called that victory “more special than others, because I had to fight and work hard in the last year to come back to my level”.
But that triumph was completely eclipsed by the 28-year-old’s first-ever Grand Tour stage win on Thursday, taken against all the odds after a day-long break that only just escaped the peloton’s clutches at Bourg-en-Bresse.
As chance would have it, Tour de France finishes in Bourg-en-Bresse have previously smiled on Soudal-QuickStep, with the previous winner in the French town being back in 2007 with Tom Boonen, a longstanding star of the Belgian team and, like Asgreen, also a Classics specialist.
Now 16 years further on, though, the boot was on the other foot. Rather than the stage being decided in a sprint like when Boonen won, Asgreen and his three breakaway companions somehow both kept the peloton at bay by the bare minimum. Furthemore and unlike in 2007 where QuickStep blasted to three stage wins and the green jersey classification, it simultaneously provided the Belgian team with a much-needed first victory in the 2023 Tour.
“Obviously it’s important for a team like ours to come away with a victory, we have a long history of doing that,” Asgreen said. “I don’t know how long it’s been since we didn’t get at least one victory in the Tour, so I’m very happy not this year that’s not going to happen.
“I knew there was a chance, and without Fabio Jakobsen here” – the Soudal-QuickStep sprinter who quit the race after a long battle against crash injuries – “we’ve all been really motivated to do something. I’m just really happy it worked out.”
On such a rolling course, Asgreen’s time trialling skills were obviously crucial to the move finally succeeding. But the Dane paid tribute to all the riders in the break, which including another well-known TT specialist, Victor Campenaerts (Lotto-Soudal), the Belgian’s teammate Pascal Eenkhoorn and Uno-X Tour debutant Jonas Abrahamsen.
“It was a team time trial, we couldn’t have done it…
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