Demi Vollering collapsed as she crossed the summit of the Col de la Madeleine. Her mouth was aghast, her body was slumped over the handlebars of her bike, her stomach visibly convulsed as she frantically tried to gasp oxygen. This was a woman who had given everything to the penultimate stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She did so on the day in which everyone expected her to perform, when all eyes were on her to create magic and grasp the yellow jersey she so heartbreakingly lost the year before. The reality, however, was a long, dark battle up one of cycling’s hardest mountains as the dream disappeared up the switchbacks in front of her.
"I just don't feel like myself. I just miss some power in the legs. My heart and lungs were OK, but my legs were just finished today," the FDJ-Suez rider commented when she finally managed to gather herself and speak to the crowds of media who surrounded her.
"Actually, I felt good in the beginning, but I didn't have an answer to Sarah Gigante's attack. Normally, I should be able to follow, but I'm very disappointed, of course. I just couldn't keep up. It's as simple as that. Cycling is very simple for once."
Vollering is right that what happened to her on the 18-kilometre ascent that has shaped the Tour de France Femmes yellow jersey battle was not complicated. It was just that two riders were much, much better than her by a margin which no one would have expected before the stage began. In the end, the Dutchwoman haemorrhaged over three minutes on the decisive stage to new yellow jersey wearer Pauline Ferrand-Prévot. For a rider who had been touted as the pre-race favourite ever since last summer, the expectation was for more. But there was nothing more to be done.
“We never know what happened, maybe today was just a bad day or it was just an incredible performance by the best multi-disciplined rider in the world. I think Pauline is on the same level as she was in the Olympic Games mountain bike race and we need to accept that the best won today,” FDJ-Suez team manager, Stephen Delcourt, commented at the finish of stage eight.
We can analyse the performance of Demi, it isn’t what we expect from her like we saw at the Vuelta or Itzulia for example, normally she can do the Madeleine so much faster. We need to just accept it was a bad day, but the best rider won. We are third in the ranking, it is not what we expected but it is not a bad performance either.”
Did Vollering’s crash on stage three impact her performance today? The general consensus among the team was that the 28-year-old had fully recovered from the accident, and that cannot be blamed for her performance in the mountains.
“I think Demi maybe didn’t have the best legs of the week. You have to do what you can, in the end it is like this. I think she didn’t have the best legs today but I don’t think the crash is still impacting her,” Vollering’s sports director, Lars Boom, told Rouleur, just a few moments after the Dutch rider had summited the Madeleine.
Overall, FDJ-Suez believed they could have done nothing more to save Vollering’s Tour de France dreams on Saturday. There wasn’t really any option in the face of a flying Ferrand-Prévot who simply seemed a level above the rest when the roads kicked up. The thing they can do now, Delcourt insists, is focus on the final opportunity they have in this race on stage nine.
“All is possible. It depends on the level of Demi. If she comes back on the top level we can expect something, we need to play with [Sarah] Gigante and Pauline but it depends on the recovery,” Delcourt said. “We never give up and we want to do something.”
Coming back from a disappointment as grave as Vollering has suffered on stage eight of the Tour de France Femmes is not going to be easy. However, Delcourt had the perspective to note that Ferrand-Prévot’s performance is going to push the entirety of women’s cycling forward, encouraging his team especially to step up their game with the aim of challenging the French rider in years to come. FDJ-Suez’s only choice now is to look ahead.
“It’s a big challenge now for us. We need to work hard, to try something different because Pauline is really good,” Delcourt said. “I actually enjoy this moment because it shows we also need to work differently and work hard to come back at this level. We need to accept what has happened today and work with the staff and Demi. It is still a really good season for the team.”
