Tour de France 2023 - Stage 18 preview

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Stage 18: Moûtiers to Bourg-en-Bresse

Date: July 20, 2023

Distance: 184.9km

Stage type: Hilly

For a fourth time Moûtiers hosts the stage of the Tour de France and, with a gently hilly 184.9 kilometre route to Bourg-en-Bresse, the general classification riders will have a chance to drop back into anonymity.

That will be a big relief for Tadej Pogačar, who saw all hope of overtaking Jonas Vingegaard vanish en route to Courchevel on stage 17. He will do his best to recover from a small crash at the start of Wednesday's stage and likely not feature in the dash for bonus seconds.

After Vingegaard's triumphant two stages with a dominant time trial and even more commanding performance on the Col de la Loze he'll also relish a day of sitting in the peloton.

The sprinters' teams will likely take over with the flat finale in the capital of the Ain department, where Jasper Philipsen will hope to add to his tally in the points classification.

Philipsen holds a massive lead of 137 points over Mads Pedersen (Lidl-Trek) and is unlikely to be overtaken unless disaster strikes before the final stage in Paris.

However, only nine of the 22 teams in the Tour de France have won a stage so there will be a big fight to make the breakaway and motivation to make it stick from teams who have missed out so far, in particular Soudal-Quickstep who lost sprinter Fabio Jakobsen to a crash on stage 12.