When the Tour de France yellow jersey wearer crashes there are some who believe in an unwritten rule that their close rivals should refrain from attacking to gain time, that doing so would show a lack of sportsmanship. However when Demi Vollering was caught up in a huge crash with 6.5 km to go on stage five into Amneville in this year’s Tour de France Femmes, Canyon//SRAM, with Kasia Niewiadoma third on GC, drove the pace at the front.
With Chloe Dygert still in the group alongside the former polka-dot jersey winner, the American set up her teammate to launch an attack over the top of the final climb before the flat approach to the line.
“I didn’t hear a crash happening,” explained Niewiadoma. “I thought it had just split up on the descent. This happens many times even in the final. My race instinct kicked in. We wanted to make it to the final, we knew that the final could work quite well for me, we never did a recon of the stage so we didn’t exactly know what the last 500 metres were like, but our main goal was to win, we learned about the thing that happened afterwards. It’s not something we celebrate or are proud of but it’s part of racing.”
Despite their efforts, Niewiadoma was beaten on the line by SD Worx’s Blanka Vas but her position, and the gap to Vollering behind, meant that she moved into the race lead.
“We are here to win and I’m here to do what Kasia needs,” said Dygert. “And she asked for me to go full gas and so that’s what I did. I think we have yellow now, maybe, so it’s a big day for us and I’m really proud for Kasia, she's been working for this all year.”
Indeed, Niewiadoma wearing yellow marks a significant moment for the team. “For us it’s a surprise to come into the yellow jersey today and we are very happy with this. It’s the first time in the Tour de France to have the yellow jersey so we are all very happy,” Canyon//SRAM directeur sportif André Schulze told Rouleur.
Schulze also defended the means by which the team gained the race lead: “The real final was on and it was 8 kms to go, nobody will wait and during the race this is the rule, yes, but there was the final already on. Everyone was fighting for positions to do the best from the stage first and this was also what we did.”
With less than 10 kilometres of racing still to go and amongst a hectic fight to get to the front it is easy for confusion to happen. While Niewiadoma and her team did not wait for Vollering it is arguably their prerogative to take the race on, especially when most of Vollering’s own teammates did not drop back to help her mitigate her time loss. Still, Niewiadoma approached a devastated-looking Vollering after the stage, telling her: “I didn’t want to take it in that way, so hopefully we can still fight.” “It’s just a shit way to lose time,” was Vollering’s terse reply.
“I just wanted to check up on her and make sure she was ok,” Nieiwadoma said. “Crashing is a part of racing and we are all loyal towards each other and we have the same goal fighting for victories but this isn’t what we want. I just wanted to be polite to make sure she was ok and not hurt too much.”
With her preferred terrain of the mountains fast approaching Niewiadoma now has a significant buffer of one minute and 19 seconds over Vollering but, she says, it means little once the race is on.
“One minute nineteen in the mountains is nothing to be honest,” she said. “But I know I spent a lot of time preparing for the final stages. In some ways I feel confident knowing that I put effort and work into improving long climbing skills. Demi is extremely strong and working on the same things so it is going to be a tough battle.”
