It doesn’t get much bigger than the Giro d’Italia — especially for an Italian rider. So when Elisa Longo Borghini successfully fended off attacks last Sunday on the race’s final stage in Imola to seal the pink jersey, you might have expected her to take a little time off to savour what she had accomplished.
However, that victory was only the first half of Borghini’s ambitious plans for this summer. A week on Saturday, she, along with all the leading women in the cycling world, will head to the Tour de France Femmes, where she’s aiming to follow in the footsteps of the great Annemiek van Vleuten and accomplish the Giro/Tour double. Overall victory at the Giro is one thing; the Tour de France Femmes, with its prestige and popularity since at last being added to the calendar in 2022, feels even bigger.
Despite her nationality, the Tour de France Femmes might be the one Borghini really wants to win. After all, she already had the Giro on her palmarès following her overall victory last year ahead of Lotte Kopecky. That year, too, the plan was for her to ride the Tour after the Giro, but she was denied the opportunity to do so due to lingering injuries from a crash. She therefore has unfinished business at La Grande Boucle, and, now aged 33 years old, will want to win the yellow jersey while she’s still at the peak of her powers.
There can be no denying Borghini’s form going into the Tour following her exploits at the Giro. She began the race strongly, placing third in the opening time trial and retaining that position on GC until the first summit finish of Pianezze, where she climbed better than anyone other than Sarah Gigante to move up to second overall. Then, having safely navigated the crosswind drama of stage five, she used both brains and brawn to take the pink jersey on the race’s penultimate and queen stage, getting a jump on rival Marlen Reusser in the pink jersey to get a gap over on a descent, then flying up the Monte Nerone to take the overall lead.
Similarly, by finishing in second place at the Giro, Marlen Reusser has reinforced her credentials as a yellow jersey candidate for the Tour. While she won’t enjoy the luxury of a time trial in the upcoming race to lay down the foundations for a GC bid as she did at the Giro, her win in that opening stage in Bergamo demonstrates her great form, while she continued to climb as well as she has done all season in the mountains. And, though she ultimately lost out to Borghini for the overall victory, the fact that she managed to retain second place despite suffering from illness during the final stages suggests she can go even better in France.
The final rider on the podium, Sarah Gigante, also wrote herself into the list of yellow jersey contenders with her performances. The Australian was the best climber of the race, storming to two stage wins on the summits at Pianezze and Monte Nerone, and might even have won the pink jersey had she not been caught out in the crosswinds on stage five. She’ll need to iron out such errors if she’s to really compete with the best for the yellow jersey, but Gigante looks like a new rider now fully recovered from the injury setbacks of recent years, and looks poised to improve upon her seventh-place finish at the Tour last year.
Less impressive were the SD Worx riders, whose performances spell concern for their yellow jersey hopes. While Lorena Wiebes continued to be her usual unstoppable self in the sprints, coming home with two stage wins, they were unable to compete seriously with Borghini and Reusser for the GC. The plan is for Lotte Kopecky to be their GC leader at the Tour, with the Belgian having signalled her intent to target the yellow jersey long ago, but she was unable to compete for GC in Italy when back pain forced her to drop out of the race after stage five. Two weeks isn’t very long to recover, and she faces a race against time to be in top shape for the Tour. And the rider tasked with going for GC in her absence, Anna van der Breggen, wasn’t quite able to challenge, excelling in the crosswinds but losing time in the mountains to finish a modest sixth overall. That’s far from the levels she reached pre-retirement; suddenly, the two-pronged attack of Kopecky and Van der Breggen does not seem quite such a frightening prospect for their opponents to overcome.
All of these riders will be banking on still being fresh come the Tour despite their efforts from the Giro, and hoping instead that they’ll be able to carry their form into the latter race. It’s unclear how feasible that will be, but the results of the Tour since the inaugural edition in 2022 suggest it's a big ask, with the exception of Van Vleuten’s double in 2022, and Pauliena Rooijakkers last year, every Tour podium finisher declined to ride the Giro beforehand.
Recent history, therefore, suggests that going into the Tour fresh, having not ridden the Giro, is the safer way of approaching, and it’s notable that both of the main protagonists from the GC race of last year’s Tour opted not to ride the Giro this year. Demi Vollering still feels like the favourite for yellow given her run of four overall victories in her five stage race appearances this year, while defending champion Kasia Niewiadoma at last started to come into some form by placing third overall at the Tour de Suisse.
But the beauty of this year’s Tour de France is just how open it feels. Right now, a convincing case could be made for how any one of the aforementioned could win the yellow jersey, and that’s not even mentioning the highly anticipated return of Paris-Roubaix winner Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who has clearly stated her ambitions to win it. The excitement of the Giro d’Italia, and the form of Borghini, Reusser and Gigante, has served to whet the appetite even more.
