The event was more of an exhibition than a race, but the big stars gave the many present fans a great show with continuous attacks. Tadej Pogačar, Peter Sagan and Chris Froome (Israel-Premier Tech) were active right from the start, getting into breaks and fighting for the intermediate sprints.
Sagan claimed the points classification as he did more times than anyone at the Tour de France in his career with seven green jerseys. He recently retired from road racing with an off-road campaign planned for the coming year.
"I'm still feeling good. It was only two weeks ago that I did my last race in Tour of Turkey and of course, it's not an official race but maybe it counts as 20," said Philipsen after the race.
"The roads are really technical as always in a city centre circuit and the temperature was really hot here in Singapore, but my team did a great job to get back Tadej [Pogačar] in the final lap and we were happy we could still take him."
"It's really hard to repeat this season but we are gonna try next year. I'm really motivated and will try to do even better, but the bar is high so we will see."
The criterium was the headline event of the weekend in Singapore, preceded by a team time trial won by UAE Team Emirates and a series of fan events including amateur criteriums and charity rides.
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Four-time Tour de France champion Froome got himself into the first break of the day with three other riders, but this was short-lived as UAE Team Emirates worked to bring it back together.
The third break of the day was the most successful, slipping away with 23km to go. It contained a Tour de France stage winner from this year, Victor Lafay (Cofidis) and Brandon Rivera (Ineos Grenadiers).
They were caught with 13km remaining before Vuelta a España champion Sepp Kuss (Jumbo-Visma) found his way off the front with Pogačar and Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek), the polka-dot jersey winner from this year’s Tour.
Two-time Tour winner Pogačar went solo as they hit the penultimate lap and 4km to go mark, slipping away from Ciccone and Kuss. He took the bell alone with Froome leading the chase for Mark Cavendish (Astana Qazaqstan).
The British duo rode for the Tour de France Criterium Legends team alongside Sagan and Ciccone. The Slovakian led out the Manx Missile coming into the final corner as Pogačar was reabsorbed, but Philipsen’s launch on the left was too strong for Cavendish.
It was a fitting end for the winningest rider of 2023, Philipsen, who took 19 victories this season and the most at the Tour de France with four. He’s established himself as the best sprinter in the world throughout the year, a clear step above the rest in any flat finish.
James Moultrie is a gold-standard NCTJ journalist who joined Cyclingnews as a News Writer in 2023 after originally contributing as a freelancer for eight months, during which time he also wrote for Eurosport, Rouleur and Cycling Weekly. Prior to joining the team he reported on races such as Paris-Roubaix and the Giro d’Italia Donne for Eurosport and has interviewed some of the sport’s top riders in Chloé Dygert, Lizzie Deignan and Wout van Aert. Outside of cycling, he spends the majority of his time watching other sports – rugby, football, cricket, and American Football to name a few.
