Pauline Ferrand-Prévot confirmed an exuberant general win within the Tour de France Femmes in fashion, along with her second mountain-stage win in Châtel Les Portes du Soleil. Amid euphoric scenes, Ferrand-Prévot, gold medallist on the Paris Olympics final 12 months, adopted up her lone win on the Col de la Madeleine on Saturday with one other solo exploit within the Tour’s closing stage.
Ferrand-Prévot turns into the primary French rider to win the Tour de France Femmes, 36 years after her compatriot Jeannie Longo gained the Tour de France Féminin, though that race didn’t examine with the size, issue and international renown of the newest incarnation. Abruptly, after ready 40 years for a successor to Bernard Hinault within the males’s Tour, all France is now enamoured by ladies’s biking and with the 33-year-old from Reims, who was referred to as inside minutes of confirming her victory by the French president, Emmanuel Macron.
Ferrand-Prévot’s achievement, of successful the Tour de France and Paris-Roubaix in the identical 12 months, and each inside 12 months of successful an Olympic gold medal for mountain biking, confirms her versatility and ambition. With the Olympic rings tattooed on her arm, she had reverted to street racing from mountain biking and said that it was her ambition to win the Tour inside three years. She did it in a single.
“I believe I put the bar actually excessive this 12 months by way of getting ready for this race,” she mentioned. “There have been a number of sacrifices. Now I simply wish to benefit from the second, as a result of it would solely occur as soon as.”
The writing was on the wall even on stage one, when she jumped away from the peloton on the ultimate climb of the Côte de Cadoudal in Plumelec, with a pointy acceleration. However she bided her time and has remained calm and contained all through, even throughout the mid-race public spat between her group supervisor, Jos van Emden, and Demi Vollering’s group supervisor, Stephen Delcourt.
For seven of the 9 levels she remained discreet, however when her second got here she was prepared. If her first stage win, on the Madeleine on Saturday, confirmed the sooner impressions of her velocity in Plumelec, her win in Châtel emphasised her dominance.
“I’d mentioned to the sports activities administrators this morning that if I may win in yellow then I’d attempt to,” she mentioned. “All of it got here all the way down to how I felt on the final climb. I attacked however I didn’t suppose I’d be capable to hold going like that and win.”
As the ultimate stage started there have been, initially, some nerves and Ferrand-Prévot was put below strain nearly instantly as she misplaced floor with the primary peloton on the lengthy descent from the begin to Sallanches.
“I made a mistake on the primary descent,” she mentioned. “I believe I used to be only a bit scared with the strain of the jersey, so afterwards I stayed near the entrance and made an effort to remain there.”
However the race chief rejoined the primary group on the strategy to the primary climb, the Cote d’Arâches-la-Frasse. Even earlier than high of the primary class climb a variety had been made with the favourites all transferring forward of the splintering bunch, in pursuit of the lone breakaway, Anna van der Breggen.
The Dutch rider, twelfth general because the stage started, constructed up a close to two-minute lead on the strategy to the toughest climb of the stage, the Col de Joux-Aircraft. Behind her the primary peloton dwindled additional after Cédrine Kerbaol, then fifth general, crashed on the foot of the climb and was distanced shortly.
The Joux-Aircraft’s gradients diminished the lead group to simply seven riders, together with Ferrand-Prévot, second-placed Sarah Gigante, the 2023 winner, Vollering, and the defending champion, Kasia Niewiadoma.
5 kilometres from the highest, Gigante accelerated, taking her rivals along with her, however as on Saturday’s climb, to the highest of the Madeleine, the Australian was not in a position to open a spot. As a substitute, it was Vollering and Niewiadoma who mixed on the quick descent to distance Gigante, within the hope of pushing her out of the Tour’s high three. By the foot of the descent that they had succeeded and he or she was by no means in a position to get well.
Vollering, second general, and Niewiadoma, who completed third, have proven outstanding consistency. They’ve appeared on the rostrum in each version of the Tour de France Femmes since its inauguration in 2022. However this previous week was all in regards to the rebirth of French biking. With the yellow jersey plus 4 stage wins out of 9 days of racing, two for Ferrand-Prévot and two for the irrepressible Maëva Squiban, the hosts have dominated. There’s, in the end, life after Hinault.
