Over the course of her two decade-long career, and her barely believable tally of over 250 wins, Marianne Vos has seen just about everything there is to see in cycling. Yet there can’t have been many wins quite like the way she managed to triumph at the opening stage of this year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.
She won this stage, her third in the Tour’s history, despite not exactly trying to. Her priority on the draggy uphill to the finish line in Plumelec, which averaged a tough 6% for 1.8km, was not her own sprint, but rather helping her teammate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot take the win. Though Vos was glued to her wheel during Visma-Lease a Bike’s long and impressive lead-out, Ferrand-Prévot took the peloton by surprise by launching her own attack just over 700m from the finish, rather than finish off the lead out for Vos.
With just a few hundred to go, it appeared Ferrand-Prévot had victory in the bag. She’d opened up a gap of a few seconds on the rest of the peloton, and, despite the best efforts of Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime) to drag her back, was maintaining her lead. But when Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal) powerfully launched her sprint, and Ferrand-Prévot began to tie up, suddenly the gap began plummeting.
Luckily for Visma-Lease a Bike, Vos was monitoring the situation, and drew upon her all experience and years of winning bike races to play the race situation perfectly. She jumped from wheel to wheel depending on whoever looked the most dangerous rider at the time, from Van der Breggen, to Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), and finally to Le Court when she started to open a gap. Then, just as it was clear that Ferrand-Prévot was going to be caught, she launched her own sprint, flying past the Mauritian. Even then Vos still had the presence to look over to her teammate on multiple occasions to make sure that she definitely was going to be defeated by Le Court, before finishing off her sprint to take the victory.
It was yet another highlight in the incomparable career of Vos, and, following several near misses in the previous two editions, her first stage at the Tour since 2022. And it also means she’ll once again adorn the yellow jersey she wore so proudly for five days during that inaugural edition. Yet it was also a triumph for her Visma-Lease a Bike team, who, in a race where it’s hard to pick an obvious strongest line-up, were the outstanding team of this opening stage. Their lead-out ahead of the final climb was impressively strong, as they held off all the other teams (most notably UAE Team ADQ, who challenged them for control of the peloton in the final kilometres) to take firm control of the peloton. Young Brit Imogen Wolff was especially impressive, setting a searing pace, before Ferrand-Prévot took over just over 1km from the finish.
Much like her intention was to allow her teammate to take the stage win today, the long-term idea for Vos and Visma-Lease a Bike will be for Ferrand-Prévot to inherit that yellow jersey at some point — and the signs from today’s stage were promising. The Frenchwoman has not raced at all for almost three months, and not won a race since her memorable triumph at Paris-Roubaix in April, but the signs are that she’s fresh and has brought to this Tour the form that saw her claim that monumental victory. The fact she tied up at the end won’t take away from how superior she looked to Van der Breggen on the final climb, and the fact she managed to hold off the Dutchwoman’s committed charge And though the punchier Le Court and Vos managed to catch and pass her, she did manage to put time into virtually all of her GC rivals.
In fact, the only major GC contender not to lose time to Ferrand-Prévot was reigning champion Niewiadoma. This was pretty much a faultless start to the Pole’s title defence, and a sign that she has peaked for this race having not looked at her best so far this season.
Coming in three seconds later was Demi Vollering (Groupama-FDJ). Though that’s hardly a big margin, she might be a little perturbed at being defeated by Niewiadoma on a finish like this, considering that the Dutchwoman is the race favourite. And if she learned anything from her agonising defeat to the Pole last year, it’s that even a race as big and as long as the Tour de France can be decided by mere seconds.
A cluster of other GC contenders finished just behind Vollering, with Van der Breggen arriving home two second behind her, and Pauliena Rooijakkers (Fenix-Deceuninck), Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) and Niamh Fisher-Black (Lid-Trek) arriving a further five seconds behind. They’re all pretty minor losses and shouldn’t have much of an impact in the grand scheme of things; but other GC contenders have much more to worry about.
Concerns about Lotte Kopecky’s fitness amid her ongoing back problem were confirmed, when she was distanced in the final to lose 1:04. SD Worx-Protime said prior to the race that Van der Breggen was to be promoted to their GC leader ahead of the Belgian as a result, and that has clearly become the case.
Similarly, any notion that recently crowned Giro d’Italia champion Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) might have been being coy upon insisting that she’s here to chase stage wins rather than GC were also dismissed, when the Italian arrived at the finish down in 39th, having lost 52 seconds If she continues in that trajectory, she’ll soon have lost enough to be no longer considered a GC threat, and to be able to ride with freedom to attack and chase those stage wins.
One rider who will neither be targeting the GC or stage wins is Marlen Reusser (Movistar), the biggest disappointment of the day. Like Borghini and Kopecky, Reusser had played down hopes of her GC challenge due to a bout of food poisoning that disrupted her preparations for this race. She had still hoped she could recover in time, but it was clear when she was dropped during the race’s finale that she hadn’t, and she climbed off the bike to call it a day even before the stage had finished. It's an enormous shame for both her and the race, as her form all season promised that she’d be a serious candidate for the yellow jersey. And it was a terrible day for Movistar in general, as their main hope for the stage win, Liane Lippert went down in a crash, and lost over six minutes, putting her well and truly out of GC contention.
We’re only one day into the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and no significant climbs, but already the race has produced some high-profile victims.
