Tour de France Femmes: Ferrand-Prévot closes on home glory after dazzling win

The Guardian

6 hours ago

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the Olympic mountain bike gold medallist at Paris 2024, took a commanding overall lead in the Tour de France Femmes after a spectacular lone victory at the summit of the Col de la Madeleine.
With one stage remaining in the nine-day race, the 33-year-old from Reims is on the verge of ending French cycling's 40 years wait by ending the long wait for a successor to Bernard Hinault's 1985 win in the men's Tour de France.
Ferrand-Prévot, unlike many of those watching at the roadside, held back the tears until after an embrace from the Tour director, Marion Rousse. 'I've realised a little girl's dream, it's a perfect day,' Ferrand-Prévot said after taking the yellow jersey. 'I have to thank the public and my family who were here at the roadside.'
Her solo success on the Tour's queen stage went beyond the host country's highest expectations and crushed the hopes of the defending champion, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, as well as the 2023 champion, Demi Vollering, who were left behind on the long climb to the 2,000m Haute-Savoie mountain top.
'It was a big effort for over an hour, hour and a half of climbing, and I had to manage it,' Ferrand-Prévot said. 'But it's really been a team effort all week and it's as much for them as it is for me.' For a Visma-Lease a Bike team who were once again dominated by Tadej Pogacar in the men's Tour de France, it was a sweet success.
With just the final stage, from Praz-sur-Arly to Châtel, remaining, Ferrand-Prévot leads the Australian climber Sarah Gigante by more than two-and-a-half minutes and Vollering by three minutes and 18 seconds. Niewiadoma-Phinney is a further half-minute behind.
Ferrand-Prévot said: 'I've still got to finish the job, but one year after the Games in Paris, to win here, on this mythic climb, it's incredible.'
The sense the race had been unsettled before the summit finishes was emphasised by the stop-start racing on the approach to the beyond category summit finish on the Madeleine, where the fight for the yellow jersey finally began. The pivotal moment came 12km from the summit when Gigante pulled clear of the favourites, with Pauliena Rooijakkers and Ferrand-Prévot in pursuit.
Gigante, teammate to the overnight race leader, Kim Le Court, has struggled to keep pace on the descents, but her rapid climbing has compensated for that shortcoming. This time, though, Ferrand-Prévot was quick to respond to her sharp acceleration and the pair soon joined forces.
The French rider also benefited from her Visma-Lease a Bike team's tactics. Marion Bunol went in the early break, waiting ahead to pace her teammate up the climb. That gave her the respite she needed, before she dropped her final companion, Niamh Fisher-Black, five kilometres from the finish.
Le Court, Niewiadoma-Phinney and Vollering had little or no meaningful response so Ferrand-Prévot's climbing speed. It was a tough day for Le Court. The descending speed that had saved her overall lead on the previous stage to Chambéry let her down 24 hours later, when she raced too fast into a tight left-hand bend and somersaulted into a ditch.
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None of her rivals waited for the race leader as she got to her feet and remounted. If anything the peloton of favourites pushed on even harder as Le Court dropped almost a minute behind.
However, in the valley road leading to the next climb, the Côte de Saint-Georges d'Hurtières, the peloton slowed and Le Court rejoined the main group. After that, she led the way at the foot of the Madeleine, hoping to set up Gigante.
Her efforts were not in vain, but she and Gigante had not factored in Ferrand-Prévot's extended climbing powers. 'Other teams don't know what's coming,' Le Court had said of Gigante's climbing skills. But they had reckoned without Ferrand-Prévot.
Now drawing huge crowds to the roadside and growing TV audiences, the fourth edition of the Tour Femmes, has built further on the success of the first three. 'I really felt something big was happening,' Rousse said. 'I had tears in my eyes. I was a little overwhelmed because women's cycling has come so far.'
Rousse also revealed that Christian Prudhomme, director of the men's Tour, had said to her: 'I no longer see any difference between the two Tours de France.'