Marianne Vos wins Tour de France Femmes first stage after stirring late attack
The 38-year-old Dutchwoman overtook her Visma-Lease a Bike teammate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot approaching the line, and then held off Mauritian rider Kim Le Court in the closing metres of a gruelling uphill finish.
Ferrand-Prévot looked set to win the stage, but the Frenchwoman attacked too early from 600 metres and could not withstand the late surge from Vos, who punched the air with her left fist as she crossed the line.
Moments later, Vos hugged an exhausted-looking Ferrand-Prévot, the Paris-Roubaix winner.
"I didn't now if Pauline was still hanging in the finish, but in the end I sprinted a bit with Kim," Vos said, praising her teammate's effort.
"I'm really grateful to the team and to Pauline."
The hilly 78.8-kilometre route from Vannes to Plumelec in Brittany featured two small climbs and was completed in 1 hour, 53 minutes, 3 seconds by Vos — a multiple world champion, a former Olympic road race champion and a silver medallist at last year's Paris Games.
Former Olympic time-trial silver medallist Marlen Reusser was one of 10 riders to crash some 30 kilometres from the end.
She continued for a while but was clearly struggling and had to abandon the stage.
The second stage from the port city of Brest to Quimper stays in Brittany and is slightly more hilly and longer at 110.4 kilometres.
The nine-stage race, which ends August 3, began a day before the end of the men's Tour, set to be won for a fourth time by Slovenian star Tadej Pogačar by a comfortable margin.
The women's race could be far closer.
Last year provided the smallest winning margin in the history of the women's and men's races, with Polish rider Kasia Niewiadoma beating 2023 champion Demi Vollering by four seconds, and Pauliena Rooijakkers only 10 seconds off the pace in third place.
AP
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