Vollering out to avenge 2024 heartbreak in Tour de France Femmes battle with Niewiadoma
While the Polish star has stated her wish to win back-to-back Tours, Vollering, who moved to the French team FDJ Suez at the end of last season, is determined to again conquer the race she won in 2023.
Their duel on the slopes of Alpe d'Huez at the climax of last year's race was one of the most gripping in the history of any Tour de France and led to the narrowest margin of overall victory ever, in either the men's or women's race.
Vollering, now 28, the winner of this year's women's Vuelta a España, Strade Bianche and three other stage races, arrives in Brittany as the outstanding favourite. Niewiadoma has made a slow start this year but comes to the race in ascending form for Canyon-Sram, having won the Polish national road race title in June and finished third in the Tour of Switzerland.
But the pair have other rivals, with Marlen Reusser, winner of the Tour of Switzerland and second in the Giro d'Italia, and Elisa Longo Borghini, winner of the women's Giro, leading the way.
Others including Australian climber Sarah Gigante, Pauline Ferrand-Prevot, winner of the women's Paris-Roubaix, and Anna van der Breggen, third in the women's Vuelta and Vollering's former sports director, are among those capable of mounting a serious challenge.
The peloton will race more than 1,165km across the country from Brittany to the mountains, the stages increasing in difficulty before a final weekend of climbing in the Alps.
As for the race itself, which will stage its 2027 Grand Départ in the UK, director Marion Rousse has been overwhelmed by the huge growth of its popularity.
'The women's Tour de France is growing fast, almost too fast,' she said. 'I think back to the first edition, I had a lot of questions and doubts. I wondered if it would work, if people would watch and be interested.'
In 2026 the race will move dates to a standalone start, that no longer piggybacks the interest in the final weekend of the men's race. 'Our Tour is getting too big to be run at the same time as the men's race,' Rousse said. 'We need to change the model and create our own timescale.'
The sporting demands of the race are also increasing, something that Rousse again sees as a natural evolution. This year, both the mammoth climbs of Col de la Madeleine and the brutal Joux Plane feature on the final weekend.
After last year's cliffhanger, Rousse is hoping for another gripping ending to the nine stage race. 'If it's too hard, sometimes that causes too many differences in level, or too much time to be lost. That can kill the suspense,' she said. 'Just making it super hard, doesn't make it the best race to watch.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
15 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari: no podiums but a new culture in going ‘the extra mile'
Success breeds expectation as Lewis Hamilton, who has enjoyed both like few other drivers in Formula One, knows only too well. Having set himself the task of returning a title for Ferrari, anticipation for his first season with the team was off the scale but success has been far from forthcoming. As the Scuderia have struggled the seven-time champion has been drawing on every bit of experience in what may be the defining challenge of his storied career. At the Hungarian Grand Prix this weekend Ferrari announced they were extending their contract with team principal, Fred Vasseur, backing the Frenchman who was instrumental in bringing Hamilton on board to complete his mission of reforging Ferrari into a championship-winning outfit after underachieving for so long. However as the season approaches its summer break, with 10 races to come after Budapest and Ferrari winless, Vasseur still has much to achieve. Hamilton has been outspoken in his support for Vasseur since he made the switch after 12 years with Mercedes but, during a season of acclimatisation and adaptation to a new team, the British driver has appreciated that he must do more than drive. Rather it seems, as Michael Schumacher managed to such great success with Ferrari, to take a leadership role. It is believed Hamilton was somewhat taken aback at the team's organisation and methodologies when he began working with them and that he felt the decision making process was ungainly. He has repeatedly stressed he is convinced they have the talent in personnel to succeed but it has become clear he thinks they must be utilised better. At Belgium last week he was unusually candid in revealing he had held a series of meetings with the key players at Ferrari: Vasseur, the chair John Elkann and the chief executive, Benedetto Vigna. Moreover he had gone as far as compiling two documents detailing suggestions for the progress he believes is needed to turn around Ferrari's fortunes, an admission that caused no little stir. One of said submissions was about the car, where he thought it could be improved and more crucially where they might take it under the new regulations next year. This might be considered the due diligence of any committed, ambitious and thoughtful driver. However of more significance was the second aimed at the operational approach at Ferrari, the 'structural adjustments' he believed were required. 'It is a huge organisation and there's a lot of moving parts, and not all of them are firing on all the cylinders that [they] need to be,' he said. 'That's ultimately why the team's not had the success that I think it deserves. So I feel that it's my job to challenge absolutely every area, to challenge everybody in the team, particularly the guys that are at the top who are making the decisions.' For the 40-year-old Hamilton there is urgency to this task. Ferrari is surely his last shot at claiming a record-breaking eighth title that would end the team's drought stretching back to 2007 for a drivers' championship and 2008 for a constructors'. He is more than aware that since then the Scuderia has come close but still failed to deliver even with former world champions Fernando Alonso and then Sebastian Vettel at the wheel. Over 11 seasons between 2010 and 2020, there were many wins for Alonso and Vettel but still ultimately the team could not seal a championship. Hamilton's actions and attitude reveal a determination that if he too is to fall short it will not be through a lack of effort on his behalf. 'I refuse for that to be the case with me, so I'm going the extra mile,' he said. 'I've obviously been very fortunate to have had experiences in two other great teams. And while things for sure are going to be different, because there's a different culture and everything, I think sometimes if you take the same path all the time, you get the same results. So I'm just challenging certain things.' That the best use of the human resource in F1 can be gamechanging could not be better illustrated than with the extraordinary resurgence Andrea Stella has wrought at McLaren in just over two years. Moreover there are also indications that internally Hamilton is already making a difference. 'The response has been amazing to the steps that we've taken in all areas,' he said in Hungary. 'The passion and the desire to continue to do better is what's the most amazing thing.' On track there is a sense that for all that Hamilton has struggled with the car this year, without a podium for 13 races, the longest period of his career, he remains as sharp as ever. His recent drives at Silverstone and Spa were proof enough of that and his call to switch to slick tyres in Belgium evidence that his instincts remain finely honed. Hamilton is then putting the building blocks in place, confident that if the team can deliver he will too, having already done the hard yards behind the scenes this season. In first practice at the Hungaroring Hamilton and his teammate Charles Leclerc continued to work with the new rear suspension Ferrari brought to Spa and which they hope will develop into a serious improvement for the car. They finished fifth and third respectively in a session which was once more dominated by the McLarens of championship contenders Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. In the second session McLaren were once more on top, with Norris again leading Piastri by two-tenths. Leclerc was third and Hamilton sixth, with Max Verstappen in 14th, very much struggling with the balance of his ride. The Dutchman's difficult afternoon was further compounded as he was investigated for throwing a towel, left in error in his car, from the cockpit while on track and issued with a warning for an unsafe release. Norris on Friday looked to ease the pressure on the title race, saying that it does not matter if he fails to beat Piastri to the world championship because 'in 200 years we will all be dead'. Asked if he needs to get under the Australian's skin to land his maiden F1 title, Norris replied: 'I don't enjoy that. In 200 years no one is going to care. We'll all be dead. I am trying to have a good time. I still care about it, and that's why I get upset sometimes and I get disappointed and angry at myself. And I think that shows just how much I care about winning and losing. 'But that doesn't mean I need to take it out on Oscar. I just don't get into those kind of things.'
Daily Mail
38 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Fake sick notes, lying wives, tantrums, intimidation and massive paydays: Exposed - the murky world of footballers trying to force a move, why clubs are powerless and how to spot a 'transfer terrorist'
It's pre-season training at a big Premier League club a year ago. The sun is shining, players are laughing as they relive antics from the beach. Coaching staff are putting the final touches to their preparations. Optimism fills the air - with one exception. Within the ranks of suntanned and toned players is what, within football, is known as a 'transfer terrorist'.
The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
Tour de France Femmes: Squiban sends home fans wild with second stage win
Maëva Squiban fuelled joyous scenes in the Haute-Savoie, winning the first high mountain stage of the 2025 Tour de France Femmes in Chambéry, just 24 hours after taking victory in stage six in Ambert. The French rider, who celebrated draped in a Breton flag, was part of a 13-rider breakaway that splintered on the first climb, the Côte de Saint-Franc, and then gradually dwindled as the gradients started to bite. Squiban, a former French junior champion when 15 years old, finally shed her last companion, Mareille Meijering, 2km from the top of the Col du Granier and accelerated clear alone. 'At the start, I made a joke about attacking again,' she said, 'but in the end it wasn't a joke.' On the fast descent of the Granier, overlooking Chambéry, Squiban, nudging 80km/h on the narrow road, again held off the pursuing group of race favourites, including the defending champion, Kasia Niewiadoma, and rival Demi Vollering, to take successive stage wins. Further down the Granier, Kim Le Court's time in yellow appeared to have come to an end when the group of favourites picked up the pace, and her closest rival, France's Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, briefly became race leader on the road. But Le Court was saved by her fearless descending. The Mauritian did not panic and her dogged pursuit of the group containing Niewiadoma, Vollering and Ferrand-Prévot paid off when she rejoined them close to the finish. 'I think I almost died a few times on the descent,' Le Court said. 'The last 4km of the uphill were difficult. My body just completely shut off. Once I got to the top, I knew I had to do the best downhill of my life to try and come back. I did a recon of the descent a few weeks ago so I knew what was coming, and I just had to go full gas. I think I went 10 times faster than the recon.' Meanwhile, on the eve of the toughest mountain stage in the race, Ferrand-Prévot's drastic weight loss was the subject of some scrutiny after images of her racing jersey, pinned at the sleeve so it didn't hang loosely, emerged in the Dutch media. The debate has been fuelled by comments made by French rider Cédrine Kerbaol who, alarmed by the weight loss among her peers, told French media: 'We're in a dangerous moment. There are a lot of people that have won big races with very low weight, and young girls, who are trying to perform, will take them as an example. What's happening is not great.' 'Top-level sport is extreme in every way,' Rutger Tijssen, sport technical manager at Ferrand-Prévot's Visma-Lease a Bike team, told Sporza. On SaturdayToday, when the women's peloton will tackle both the 13km-long Col de Plainpalais and, later, a summit finish on the 'beyond category' Col de la Madeleine – an 18.6km climb to 2,000m – power-to-weight ratios will be pivotal. 'Pauline's leaner than in the spring,' Tijssen said, 'but this also requires different things when you have to climb the Col de la Madeleine. Then it's logical that you adapt.' Ferrand-Prévot won the Olympic mountain bike title at Paris 2024 but has since devoted herself to road racing with the goal of winning the Tour de France Femmes. 'She's not much leaner than she was a year ago,' Tijssen said. 'Of course, she stays healthy. You know what's happening and you make choices, which we monitor.' The next 48 hours will decide the outcome of the race, which includes summit finishes on the Madeleine and at Châtel, as well as the daunting climb of the Col de Joux Plane on Sunday. Only 35 seconds currently separate the top five in the overall standings, but with more than 6,000 metres of climbing still to come, those gaps are certain to widen.
