Sam Bennett fourth as Jasper Philipsen sprints to stage 16 win at Tour de France

Jasper Philipsen of Alpecin-Deceuninck sprinted to victory on Tuesday's 16th stage of the Tour de France, a 189 km flat ride from Gruissan to Nimes, with Ireland's Sam Bennett crossing the finishing line fourth.

The win was Philipsen's third on the Tour this year while green jersey holder Biniam Girmay crashed with less than 2km left.

Bennett of team Decathlon-AG2R-La Mondiale moves up to 13th in the green jersey standings following that race placing which earned him an 18-point haul and has now amassed 91 overall, 21 points outside the top 10 in the points classification.

The Carrick-on-Suir native won the green jersey at the 2020 Tour de France.

Ben Healy, meanwhile, remains 13th overall in the general classification, 29.26 minutes behind yellow jersey holder Tadej Pogacar, who now has an overall lead of three minutes and nine seconds over Jonas Vingegaard, while Remco Evenepoel remains over five minutes behind.

Alpecin-Deceuninck controlled the sprint as the riders moved up to the front to set up the victory for Philipsen and it worked to perfection as Mathieu Van der Poel's textbook lead-out allowed his Belgian teammate to win comfortably.

"I'm really happy after such a team effort. It's always nice when you can win together and that's what we did today, definitely," Philipsen said.

"I didn't see the crash (involving Girmay). We were trying to position ourselves and focus on our own lead-out. I hope everyone is OK.

"I was feeling good, I had a good rest day (on Monday), my shape improved during the Tour. So I was confident if we could line it up good today, we could go for the win. It's a difficult level, so three wins is good. We can be proud."

Philipsen crossed the line ahead of Phil Bauhaus, Alex Kristoff and Bennett.

Girma