Tour de France 2025: Philipsen wins chaotic first stage as Evenepoel and Roglic suffer
Crosswinds, crashes and chaos characterised a frenzied opening stage of the Tour de France, won by Jasper Philipsen in Lille Métropole, where the 27-year-old also took the first yellow jersey of his career.The Belgian sprinter, winner of three stages in the 2024 Tour, was given an armchair ride by his Alpecin-Deceuninck teammates into the long finishing straight of the Boulevard Vauban, where he expertly dispatched rivals, Biniam Girmay, of Intermarché Wanty, and Søren Wærenskjold, racing for Uno-X Mobility.Philipsen has now won 10 Tour stages in four years and with other sprint opportunities expected in coming days, looks in the mood to add to his tally.“Ten wins is something I will never forget,” he said, “and the team performance was incredible.We were in the front all day, we were there in the split, and in the end, we could use our strength to finish it off.
”In a chaotic opening stage, raced at breakneck speeds through gusting crosswinds, there were soon crashes, punctures and dropped riders, with many left chasing back frantically through the race convoy,Eighteen kilometres from Lille, the crosswinds finally forced a decisive coup, and a select bunch moved ahead,In the front group were the race favourites Tadej Pogacar, the defending champion of UAE Team Emirates XRG, and Jonas Vingegaard of Visma-Lease a Bike, the 2022 and 2023 winner,“It was a stressful day, but a good day for us,” Vingegaard said,“It was our plan to try and go in the wind with 20 kms to go.
The team kept me out of trouble and they made the split as well,”The Dane argued that an attack in the crosswinds was inevitable,“It’s either us, or somebody else trying,We knew it was windy enough,Either you go, or somebody else goes.
But then, at least you know you’re on the front.”Pogacar was equally pleased with the outcome.“From kilometre zero, we were at the front,” Pogacar said.“It was hectic, just as we thought.”Behind the two favourites, the fallout was brutal, with frantic scrambling required by those who had lost contact with the wheel ahead of them.
Among those cut adrift were the Olympic road race champion, Remco Evenepoel of Soudal Quick-Step, who was third overall last year, the five-time Grand Tour winner Primoz Roglic, of Red Bull-Bora-Hansgrohe, and Vingegaard’s teammate Simon Yates, the Giro d’Italia winner,Evenepoel and Roglic are now already on the back foot, as is Geraint Thomas, with all three having lost 39 seconds to Pogacar and Vingegaard,Yates, meanwhile, is a distant 164th overall, already more than six minutes behind the main favourites,“Thirty-nine seconds is a pain,” Evenepoel said,“It’s always annoying to start a Tour behind.
”It was also a painful start to the Tour for Ineos Grenadiers, after Filippo Ganna, expected to be a key contender in stage five’s individual time trial around Caen, suffered the ignominy of being the first rider to abandon after an earlier crash, just 52km into the race.Sign up to The RecapThe best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend’s actionafter newsletter promotionWorse befell the French hope Lenny Martinez, of Bahrain Victorious, mentored by the former Team Sky and British Cycling coach Rod Ellingworth.The 21-year-old finished dead last, a few metres ahead of the broom wagon, after losing more than nine minutes.The stage looped south-west and then headed north, through the Pas-de-Calais, before skirting the Belgian border and turning back towards Lille as the peloton sped towards the finish.The early breakaway, of five riders, survived for 70km before the peloton reeled them in near the first intermediate sprint, at La Motte-au-Bois, won by Jonathan Milan of Lidl-Trek.
The subsequent post-sprint lull was filled by the French duo Benjamin Thomas, a gold medallist on the track in last year’s Paris Olympics now riding for Cofidis, and TotalEnergies’ Mattéo Vercher.A breathless peloton was briefly content to give them their head on the approach to the climb of the Mont Cassel, as they built a lead nudging a minute.But in a moment that seemed to epitomise the home nation’s malaise, the pair self-sabotaged when sprinting for the climbing points at the fourth-category climb, Thomas’s rear wheel sliding across the dusty cobbles and taking a furious Vercher down, as they crested the top of the hill.Meanwhile, Dave Brailsford made a reclusive return to the Tour’s start village.“We all love having him back and feel honoured that he’s here,” Ineos Grenadiers’ sports director, Zak Dempster, said.
For now, however, Brailsford isn’t yet honouring the media with any public appearances.Stage two, heading north from Lauwin-Planque towards the Channel at Boulogne-sur-Mer, will surely offer more of the same, but with three short, sharp climbs in the closing 30km, the denouement may prove even more chaotic.
AI helps find formula for paint to keep buildings cooler
AI-engineered paint could reduce the sweltering urban heat island effect in cities and cut air-conditioning bills, scientists have claimed, as machine learning accelerates the creation of new materials for everything from electric motors to carbon capture.Materials experts have used artificial intelligence to formulate new coatings that can keep buildings between 5C and 20C cooler than normal paint after exposure to midday sun. They could also be applied to cars, trains, electrical equipment and other objects that will require more cooling in a world that is heating up.Using machine learning, researchers at universities in the US, China, Singapore and Sweden designed new paint formulas tuned to best reflect the sun’s rays and emit heat, according to a peer-reviewed study published in the science journal Nature.It is the latest example of AI being used to leapfrog traditional trial-and-error approaches to scientific advances
Google undercounts its carbon emissions, report finds
In 2021, Google set a lofty goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2030. Yet in the years since then, the company has moved in the opposite direction as it invests in energy-intensive artificial intelligence. In its latest sustainability report, Google said its carbon emissions had increased 51% between 2019 and 2024.New research aims to debunk even that enormous figure and provide context to Google’s sustainability reports, painting a bleaker picture. A report authored by non-profit advocacy group Kairos Fellowship found that, between 2019 and 2024, Google’s carbon emissions actually went up by 65%
‘A billion people backing you’: China transfixed as Musk turns against Trump
Few break-ups have as many gossiping observers as the fallout between the once inseparable Donald Trump and Elon Musk.The ill-fated bromance between the US president and the world’s richest man, which once raised questions about American oligarchy, is now being pored over by social media users in China, many of whom are Team Musk.The latest drama comes from Musk’s pledge to found a new political party, the America party, if Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill, which Musk described as “insane” passed the Senate this week (it did). Musk had already vowed to unseat lawmakers who backed Trump’s flagship piece of legislation, which is expected to increase US national debt by $3.3tn
AI companies start winning the copyright fight
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. If you need me after this newsletter publishes, I will be busy poring over photos from Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding, the gaudiest and most star-studded affair to disrupt technology news this year. I found it a tacky and spectacular affair. Everyone who was anyone was there, except for Charlize Theron, who, unprompted, said on Monday: “I think we might be the only people who did not get an invite to the Bezos wedding. But that’s OK, because they suck and we’re cool
China hosts first fully autonomous AI robot football match
They think it’s all over … for human footballers at least.The pitch wasn’t the only artificial element on display at a football match in China on Saturday. Four teams of humanoid robots took on each other in Beijing, in games of three-a-side powered by artificial intelligence.While the modern game has faced accusations of becoming near-robotic in its obsession with tactical perfection, the games in China showed that AI won’t be taking Kylian Mbappé’s job just yet.Footage of the humanoid kickabout showed the robots struggling to kick the ball or stay upright, performing pratfalls that would have earned their flesh-and-blood counterparts a yellow card for diving
Whitehall’s ambition to cut costs using AI is fraught with risk
A Dragons’ Den-style event this week, where tech companies will have 20 minutes to pitch ideas for increasing automation in the British justice system, is one of numerous examples of how the cash-strapped Labour government hopes artificial intelligence and data science can save money and improve public services.Amid warnings from critics that Downing Street has been “drinking the Kool-Aid” on AI, the Department of Health and Social Care this week announced an AI early warning system to detect dangerous maternity services after a series of scandals, and Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said he wants one in eight operations to be conducted by a robot within a decade.AI is being used to prioritise actions on the 25,000 pieces of correspondence the Department for Work and Pensions receives each day and to detect potential fraud and error in benefit claims. Ministers even have access to an AI tool that is supposed to provide a “vibe check” on parliamentary opinion to help them weigh the political risks of policy proposals.Again and again, ministers are turning to technology to tackle acute crises that in the past might have been dealt with by employing more staff or investing more money
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