Demi Vollering took the overall lead from Kasia Niewiadoma in the Tour de France Femmes with a vicious attack in the hills behind Nice to lead the race by eight seconds from the 2024 winner, with just one stage remaining.
“It’s very special to be back in yellow,” Vollering, leader of French team FDJ United-Suez said. “Tomorrow I start in yellow and I will do everything in my power to keep it. So much can happen – it’s still a big fight.”
It was Vollering’s fifth stage victory in the Tour Femmes and also her fifth yellow jersey and came after she had regretted failing to mount a meaningful pursuit of Niewiadoma on Friday’s summit finish to Mont Ventoux.
Vollering took the initiative on the final climb of the Cote de la Ginistiere and after a breakneck descent, extended her lead on the long straight road to the finish on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice.
But Niewiadoma was critical of the tactics of Vollering’s team.
“I was annoyed at the beginning of the climb because Gery, on purpose, just blocked me to the barriers where I had to stop pedalling,” she said of Celia Gery, Vollering’s teammate.
“They should compete fair play and not look to block me on the barriers because it is so childish. I lost all the respect for them for that.” Vollering responded by saying she had not seen the incident, which was studied at length by race commissaires after the stage. “I didn’t see anything, I just saw what was in front of me,” she said. “It happened behind me. I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. Celia probably didn’t see Kasia and I’m sure she didn’t do it on purpose. I’m sure Kasia knows deep in her heart that those kinds of things just happen sometimes in racing. It’s the shit part of racing.”
While the critical attacks came in the suburbs of Nice, the stage was animated by a two-rider breakaway, featuring Breton rider Maeva Squiban and Loes Adegeest, of the Netherlands.
The duo might have hoped to remain clear to the finish, but Squiban, winner of two stages in last year’s race, crashed on a left-hand bend on the descent of the Cote de Colomars and howling in pain, was swallowed up the peloton.
That left her former companion riding alone at the front of the Tour, but her escape ended nine kilometres from the finish as Vollering’s team attacked the bends leading to the Cote de la Ginistiere.
It was there that Vollering attacked, and while Niewiadoma stuck to the task, she lost ground in the final cruel metres of the short steep climb.
Now only eight seconds separate the pair. Every second will count in Sunday’s final stage of the Tour, based on Nice, which takes in four climbs of the Col d’Eze, overlooking the corniche roads of Villefranche-sur-Mer.
The rivalry between Vollering and Niewiadoma goes back to the 2024 Tour, when the Dutch rider lost to the Pole by just four seconds, the narrowest margin of defeat in the history of any Tour de France, after an epic duel to Alpe d’Huez.
Meanwhile, French favourite Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s title defence came to a predictable end. From her listless performance in the stage four time trial, to her major losses of time on Mont Brouilly and Mont Ventoux, her performance has been a stark contrast to that of a year ago.
The Olympic gold medallist’s exit from the race was sudden and dramatic. Her bike was prepared and readied outside the Visma Lease-a-bike team bus at the start of stage eight in Sisteron, when she was reported by French TV crews to have told team staff “I can’t do it, I can’t do it.”
An announcement confirming her withdrawal was made on social media afterwards stating that Ferrand-Prevot “was not feeling well this morning” and adding “in consultation with medical staff, it has been decided that she will not start.”
Ferrand-Prévot’s vulnerability was evident as early as stage three, something her trainer, Rutger Tijssen acknowledged.
“When she couldn’t hold on in the fifth stage, the signals were clearer,” he said. “We knew then that it wasn’t realistic to talk about winning the Tour.”
