Tour de France 2023 stage 11 LIVE: Result and reaction as Jasper Philipsen wins again

55km to go: The Côte de la Croix Blanche is done, and the peloton rolls on towards the finale in Moulins about 25 seconds behind this half-hearted breakaway.

65km to go: Our three-man breakaway – Matis Louvel (Arkea Samsic), Andrey Amador (EF Education) and Daniel Oss (TotalEnergies) – are still about half a minute up the road from the rest.

They are reaching the foot of the day’s final categorised climb: the Côte de la Croix Blanche (1.6km at 5.4%) shouldn’t prove too taxing and from there the road will be pretty flat all the way to the finish.

How Mark Cavendish would have loved to compete on a day like this one, a mostly flat ride destined for a sprint finish. We spoke to some of his former teammates and rivals about what made the Manx Missile so special:

75km to go: A three-man breakaway got up the road earlier: Matis Louvel (Arkea Samsic), Andrey Amador (EF Education) and Daniel Oss (TotalEnergies).

They remain about 30 seconds up on the peloton, which has ticked over at a steady pace of around 42km/hr to ensure they don’t get too far down the road. This one is surely going to finish as a bunch sprint in Moulins, because that is what the mob wants.

Jasper Philipsen will be favourite here again having already collected all three victories on flat stages in this Tour.

Who can possibly challenge him? Among the pure sprinters, Caleb Ewan and Phil Bauhaus have both come close to winning stages already this Tour and will try to get amongst it once more. Fabio Jakobsen continues to struggle with his injuries from a crash in Nogaro and it is unclear whether he can compete for victory. Dylan Groenewegen has Tour stage wins on his palmarès but hasn’t always been able to position himself for the sprint finish in this Tour so far.

And then there is Wout van Aert. The Jumbo-Visma superstar has been trying desperately to clinch a stage, and probably should have won stage two in San Sebastian when Victor Lafay was allowed to escape from the final group and couldn’t be reeled in. Van Aert was controversially squeezed out of the race to the line on stage three in Bayonne, and was beaten in the stage-eight sprint in Limoges by Mads Pedersen.

Van Aert is clearly hurting at what has been a pretty unfortunate set of near misses. He will not want to go away from this Tour empty handed, even if there is the potential consolation of playing a key role in Jonas Vingegaard’s yellow jersey defence, and this could be an opportunity to finally get on the board with what would be a 10th career win at the Tour de France.

The Belgian was given a scare yesterday when he was told of rumours that he had to leave the Tour for the birth of his second child – his wife is due to give birth to a baby boy shortly after the race. But he confirmed to the media that he is not going anywhere yet. “I just did a quick call to my wife to check if everything’s alright and luckily she’s doing fine. So I don’t know where it’s coming from but I’m in the Tour for hopefully as long as possible.”

Stage 11 has been under way for about two hours, without a huge amount of action to report so far. More on what’s happened in a moment. First, here’s a more detailed look at today’s stage – a sole second-week opportunity for the sprinters:

Follow live updates from the Tour de France today.