Uncharacteristically losing his cool, Jonas Vingegaard gestured angrily at a television motorbike to move along and leave him alone. A late incident on stage five of this year's Tour de France, had left the two-time champion scrabbling for a bike change, and his desire to avoid the camera’s gaze while drafting cars back to the peloton was understandable. But that flash of frustration served as a reminder that motorcycles have become an enveloping swarm around the Tour de France peloton.

There are as many as 100 motos on the road on each stage – an armada that has expanded to feed the demand for multi-angle live broadcasting, with around 45 camera bikes, and at least as many police escort and support motos. Conflict is inevitable. While they haven’t caused any major controversies so far in this year’s race, this sheer number of motos presents hazards, influences aerodynamics – and you wouldn’t bet against such incidents cropping up in the days to come.

“It would be nice not to worry about it, but it’s a big problem, for sure,” said Lidl-Trek’s Toms Skujiņš.

The issue at hand is almost as old as bike racing itself, but it has become increasingly pronounced in recent years: TV motorbikes getting too close to riders and creating a slipstream effect that has a real, sometimes even decisive, influence on the racing.

This is no occasional problem: it happens on each and every stage of the Tour de France, multiple times. Camera bikes frequently hover just in front of a breakaway, a solo attacker or the peloton. The benefit cannot be overstated: the effect is big enough to alter the outcome of the race.

A 2020 study by engineering professor Bert Blocken of Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, found that a motorbike sitting 10m ahead of a cyclist – and they are often much closer – reduces drag by 23%. This translates to an 8.9% speed increase, or a saving of 5.4 seconds per kilometre – 4kph of free speed at 54kph. Anyone benefitting from this effect is therefore much, much harder to catch. Conversely, if the peloton is the beneficiary, they are able to close the gap to the tête de la course much more easily.

Cycling Weekly contacted the UCI about this issue, but in response it referred us only to its rulebook – in which it is stated that a motorcycle “must operate from three-quarters in front of riders and must position itself on the opposite side of the wind in order not to provide a draft… nor allow riders to benefit from their slipstream.”

The rulebook emphasises that the motorcyclists “must carry out their work without disturbing the proper functioning of the race.” The vagueness is the problem here: how close is too close when it’s not specified in the rules?

It is generally accepted that a moto shouldn’t be within 10m of the racing, but it’s an unwritten rule – and it’s frequently ignored. Too often, as we’ve seen in this Tour de France, a motorbike loiters too close to riders, providing a pronounced aerodynamic benefit – as big a boost as a brisk tailwind. Following a motorbike at a distance of five metres, a rider’s speed increases by 15 seconds per kilometre. It’s a major advantage.

The aforementioned study from Blocken et al proved that even at greater distances there is a slipstream effect. At 30m, the following riders gain 2.7 seconds per kilometre, while at 50m it’s 1.6 seconds. A similar study by the same author, published three years later, determined that the effect of camera bikes can be even greater than that of cars. “A motorcycle with two persons sitting upright is a less aerodynamic object than [a] car. This leads to a larger benefit for the cyclist behind the motorcycle,” the report concluded.

Multiple variables affect how much influence a motorcycle has on a following cyclist, not least the road’s gradient, the speed, and the direction of the wind. But the summary of Blocken’s 2020 report stated: “The common concern in the cycling community that drafting behind motorcycles can influence the outcome of races is correct.” Riders at the Tour wholeheartedly agree.

NSN’s George Bennett, riding his sixth Tour, describes the feeling of being in a moto’s draft. “You don’t really feel it, as you’re still pedalling fast and pushing the same power, but you do notice that you’re going really fast,” he says. “You’ve also got to remember that one or two kilometres per hour faster is huge – it’s such a big margin. Suddenly gaining 10 watts is quite a big difference. In a sport of millimetres, all of these small things make a big difference.”

In Bennett’s view, it’s an issue that tends to favour the breakaways more than those fighting for overall victory at the end of a stage, but still has a significant effect on the race. “There are examples where it’s really bad,” he says, “[including] some obvious cases in the Giro d’Italia where the peloton were pulling death turns and not getting anywhere. And at the Tour de Romandie, life at the back of the peloton wasn’t fun.”

Like others we spoke to for this feature, Bennett points to Italian races as the worst offenders. “I’m sure this will be a hot topic this Tour,” adds the New Zealander. “But it’s not a new topic – it’s been around forever.”

Complaints from the peloton about the proximity of motorbikes have become increasingly common in recent years, but Bennett admits it works both ways: riders go out of their way to capitalise on the slipstream. “You want to be the guy who attacks first because you know you’re going to get a draft from the bike,” he says. “I’ve benefitted hugely from motorbikes myself.”

He is unequivocal about where the responsibility lies. “It’s definitely not at all on the riders – you’d be an idiot to move out of their draft – it’s on the motorbikes. I even know stories of Belgian ex-team-mates who have talked to motorbike drivers and made friends with them because it can really affect the race.”

What, then, is the solution? Some have suggested equipping motorbikes with lasers to project a ‘distance bubble’ on the road, while others have called for more side-on filming (though Blocken notes this would still provide an aerodynamic effect). The use of drones – as seen at Milan-San Remo and in numerous cyclo-cross races – has also been proposed. However, the most popular idea is enforcing a minimum distance rule of 25m. Blocken points out that the challenge is to ensure the camera motos can still do their job effectively. “From 100m away, on a winding road, the camera won’t see the rider.”

So what does he think should be done? “The best that can be done, while we’re waiting for drones to become practical, which could be decades, is setting some minimum distance rules. The cameras nowadays are highly advanced and they can record high quality footage 30-40m away.” One even simpler solution from Blocken is to reduce the number of motorcycles allowed in front of the racing. “We often see multiple motorcycles together in front of a group,” he says. “At most there should only be one motorcycle.”

When Blocken first published a study into the advantage motorbikes provide to following riders in 2017, the UCI was initially dismissive of his work. “The UCI technical director said it’s just a load of nonsense,” he recalls. Since then, the governing body has been more open to working with Blocken, and in 2023 it extended the minimum distance a following team car must remain behind a rider in a time trial from 10m to 25m. Blocken doubts this rule is enforced, and no such action has been taken in road races.

Even if the UCI eventually introduces new measures, Skujiņš warns that the real challenge will lie in enforcement. “A lot of the times we tell the race commissaires that the moto is too close. It might go away for five minutes, but then it’s back five minutes later,” the Latvian says. “We also need to educate the drivers and cameramen that they can’t sit close to the rider.” It’s an issue guaranteed to rear its head repeatedly at this year’s Tour – and one that shows no signs of being resolved any time soon.

British rider Robyn Clay pushed her persistence to new limits last week, when she battled through illness in the searing heat to make it to the finish of her first Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

The 22-year-old, a first-year pro with Picnic PostNL, described her debut in the nine-day race as “really, really hard”.

“I just got emotional at the finish because I think I’m just relieved that it’s finished, but also it’s such a crazy experience,” she told Cycling Weekly after the closing stage in Nice on Sunday. “It all just kind of hit me at the end.”

Clay placed 114th overall on her debut, second-last ahead of her team-mate Mia Griffin, and almost three hours behind the winner Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez).

At one point, though, she doubted whether she would finish the race at all, after she fell victim to the 35°C heatwave that stifled the opening weekend in Switzerland.

“The first couple of days I was throwing up every 20 minutes and getting dropped,” Clay said. “I was the only person getting dropped straight away, so that was really a tough pill to swallow.

“My boyfriend was wanting to book to come to Nice [for the final two stages], but I told him, ‘Don’t bother, just in case I don’t make it there.’

“But as it went on, I adapted a bit better to the heat, so it was OK.”

Thirty-two riders did not finish this year’s Tour de France Femmes, mostly due to illness or missing the time cut.

Reflecting on her debut as a whole, Clay said she was taken aback by the scale of the race, which only its fifth year is already the calendar's marquee event. “Everything’s just bigger,” the Briton said. “There’s more people, more media, more staff, more everything. It’s just like a normal race, but on a massive scale.”

Clay was named Cycling Weekly’s domestic rider of the year for 2025, having won both the National Road and National Circuit Series titles with British Continental team DAS-Hutchinson.

Since joining Picnic PostNL in January, she has started some of the biggest races in the world, including the Tour of Flanders, Paris-Roubaix, the Giro d’Italia Women, and now, the Tour de France Femmes.

Asked for her favourite thing about her Tour debut, Clay said it was “just being here and seeing all the crowds”. Conversely, she “hated” scaling Mont Ventoux, the barren, 1,910m-tall mountain that made up the finish of stage seven.

“It was well windy, but I heard that Ventoux means windy mountain, so it makes sense,” she said. “I’d like to come again.”

Some of the UK's biggest stars have been named in the line-up for next week's Tour of Britain Women (ToB). World and national champions and rising Grand Tour stars, as well as young up and comers from a variety of WorldTour teams, are all on the list.

Among the biggest names are sisters Zoe and Elynor Bäckstedt, riding for Canyon-SRAM and UAE L'Imad respectively. Zoe is the reigning national champion, both on the road and in the time trial, as well as the U23 time trial world champion, while her sister is a key team rider and herself finished on the National TT podium this year.

Those joining the sisters include Giro d'Italia revelation Lauren Dickson (FDJ United-SUEZ), who finished 11th on GC after a strong race in support of team leader Demi Vollering. A late-June crash at the Tour de Suisse saw her break a collarbone, and the ToB will be her first race back.

The line-up will also include another three national road champions in the form of former top-five finisher Pfeiffer Georgi (Picnic PostNL) and Millie Couzens (Fenix-Premier Tech), and Alice Towers, who will be riding for a Great Britain Cycling Team (GBCT). Couzens will be joined by team-mate Flora Perkins.

Recent medallists at the Glasgow Commonwealth Games Jess Roberts and Anna Morris are also set to take the start line in Cockermouth next Wednesday. The pair were part of the Commonwealth bronze medal-winning squad in the team pursuit, behind old adversaries Australia last month, with New Zealand second. They will be riding for the Great Britain team with Towers.

Backing up Roberts, Morris and Towers in the GBCT will be youngsters Amalie Cooper (21), Ruby Oakes (20) and first year senior Rebecca Gardiner.

The WorldTour-ranked race begins in Cockermouth in Cumbria next Wednesday 19 August, and runs for five stages, heading south via finishes in Blackpool, Great Orme and Hay-on-Wye, before dog-legging across England for a final stage based on Leamington Spa.

Among the top international competitors listed to start are double former stage winner and recent Tour de France Femmes green jersey winner Lorena Wiebes (SDWorx-Protime), Vuelta Femenina winner Paula Blasi (UAE L'Imad) and Tour de France Femmes GC star Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM).

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney has put to bed the mystery surrounding the Mont Ventoux Strava QOM, updating her Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift stage upload to prove she shattered the record.

The Canyon-SRAM rider soloed to victory on stage seven atop the mountain, but did not initially log a time on the official leaderboard due to her Strava privacy settings.

The QOM – the fastest time recorded by a woman – for the verified 'Mont Ventoux (par Bédoin)' segment at first went to Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L’IMAD), who finished third on the stage.

Following the race’s finale on Sunday, however, Niewiadoma-Phinney updated her Strava file, turning off her privacy restrictions, to show that she rode the climb more than a minute and a half faster than the Italian.

The Polish rider's record-breaking time for the 20.74km segment was one hour, six minutes and two seconds. Her average speed was 18.8kph – 0.4kph faster than Longo Borghini – on an average gradient of 8.3%.

In a press conference ahead of the Tour de France Femmes, Niewiadoma-Phinney declared herself “ready to break” the Strava QOM on Mont Ventoux, a climb she described as a “very iconic”.

When informed by Cycling Weekly after the race that Longo Borghini had initially taken the crown, Niewiadoma-Phinney said: “I was like nearly two minutes faster. [The QOM] is there, but it's not loading for some reason. I don’t know why.”

The answer, it turned out, lay in the fact the 31-year-old's privacy settings hide the ends of her rides on Strava. As such, her stage seven upload appeared to finish a few hundred metres short of the summit of Mont Ventoux, meaning she did not publicly record a time for the segment.

This has now been updated, as has the leaderboard.

More than 19,000 women have ridden the Strava segment for Mont Ventoux.

Seven of the top-10 best times were recorded last Friday during the Tour de France Femmes stage; alongside Niewiadoma-Phinney and Longo Borghini, the leaderboard counts Paula Blasi (UAE Team L’IMAD), Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal), Marion Bunel (Visma-Lease a Bike), Thalita de Jong (Human Powered Health) and Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal).

Also in the top-10 are former British hill-climb champion Illi Gardner and amateur Victoria Stansfield, who won L’Étape du Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, a sportive event held across one stage of the race.

Tadej Pogačar (UAE Team Emirates-XRG) holds the men's record – the KOM – with a time of 53 minutes and 47 seconds.

This year’s Tour de France Femmes was won by Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), who became the first woman in history to earn two titles in the race. Niewiadoma-Phinney finished second overall, followed by Longo Borghini in Nice.

“We came here to fight for the best possible result and, I mean, I won on Mont Ventoux, and I feel like that was the biggest day of my life, cycling-wise,” Niewiadoma-Phinney said in her post-race press conference. “I’m super proud and happy about it.”

It appears Quinn Simmons is hoping to put his Tour de France fitness to good use this August.

Less than three weeks after wrapping up his fourth Tour de France appearance, the reigning U.S. national road champion will swap his road bike for a mountain bike as he lines up at the Leadville Trail 100 in his home state of Colorado on Saturday, 15 August.

Known as the "Race Across the Sky", the Leadville Trail 100 is an iconic 100-mile mountain bike race and is one of the toughest endurance events in the United States. Its punishing course starts at more than 10,000 feet (3048 metres) above sea level and traditionally climbs well beyond 12,000 feet (3658 metres).

It is also the third round of the Life Time Grand Prix series, meaning Simmons will join a stacked field featuring some of the best gravel and mountain bike racers in the world. Chief among them is Keegan Swenson, the reigning UCI Marathon MTB world champion, three-time Life Time Grand Prix overall champion and five-time defending Leadville winner. Swenson also holds the Leadville course record of 5:43:31.

Simmons, though, is no stranger to off-road racing, nor to the altitude.

The Colorado native took on this very race in 2019, when he was just 18 years old, and produced a breakout ride that saw him finish in second place despite suffering several tyre punctures, as reported by Velo News at the time. In the finale, he outsprinted Lachlan Morton and Peter Stetina to take the runner-up spot behind Howard Grotts. Simmons turned professional with Trek-Segafredo, now Lidl-Trek, the following season.

Seven years later, Simmons returns to Leadville in formidable form, having just finished 18th overall at this year’s Tour de France and claimed his third U.S. national road race title in June.

This year’s Leadville course has been modified because of the Willow Fire, but will still cover 102.1 miles with 9,916 feet of climbing. The bikes will look a little more traditional, too, after Life Time banned drop handlebars on mountain bikes for the 2026 race. Drop-bar set-ups had become increasingly prominent at Leadville in recent years, with Swenson using one to win both the 2024 and 2025 editions.

Swenson is far from Simmons’ only competitor, however. The Life Time Grand Prix field also includes the likes of Alexey Vermeulen, Brendan Johnston, Simon Pellaud, US. .marathon national champion Cole Paton and multi-time Leadville podium finisher John Gaston.

For Simmons, Saturday will mark his first return to Leadville since that runner-up finish in 2019. The 2026 Life Time Leadville Trail 100 MTB race will stream live for free on YouTube through the Life Time Grand Prix YouTube Channel, with coverage starting at 5:15 a.m. MT on August 15.

Riders, suppliers and business partners were reportedly left out of pocket after the collapse of a British women's team.

According to reports by the BBC, the collapse of Hess Cycling, among other things, left an unpaid debt of £50,000 owed to one team supplier.

Last year, Cycling Weekly reported extensively on the end of Hess Cycling, a British Continental women’s team that folded amid financial pressures and the fallout of a fraud investigation into the owner’s business affairs.

It began, though, with the stated objective of becoming Britain's first Women's WorldTour team and elevating the status of the sport. Initially licensed in Luxembourg, before applying for a British Continental race license, the team was envisioned and launched by the Swiss businessman Rolf Hess, who talked a big game.

Hess’s declared five-year plan was to build a budget of €5million. "Our first-year budget is €750,000, with no sponsor at all," he boasted to the BBC at time. "This is entrepreneurship – we do it ourselves. We didn't buy a team – we are building a team."

Last year, it won the East Cleveland Classic through Alice McWilliam and finished third at the Rapha Lincoln Grand Prix with Grace Lister. It also competed in the 2025 Tour of Britain, but will be missing from this year's tour.

Hess' collapse followed a turbulent year for the team with a fraud investigation into its owner’s business and allegations of missed payments to riders.

"There were reasonable money issues from the start where riders were paid late or wouldn't get reimbursements," one rider told the BBC.

"We were lucky if we even saw half a million [as a team]," the cyclist said. "There was even no money at team camps and other stuff they didn't pay for. There were big bills… I know there were other riders still owed money – a lot of it."

According to the BBC, several suppliers were left with substantial unpaid bills, and soon the walls started closing in.

"Unfortunately, [our] sponsor withdrew from the partnership at the beginning of 2025," Hess said in a statement. "Hess Sports Group continued to fund operations, contributing more than £200,000 over the course of summer 2025, while working to enable the team to compete under a financially sustainable model.

"This shortfall in funding had a material impact on our operations, but allowed our athletes to compete while we worked on securing the team's future. Hess Sports Group remains committed to repaying all its creditors."

The anonymous rider added: "The team had a duty to us as riders and they  failed."

For the past five years, the end of my July and the beginning of my August have been spent in a bit of a daze, recovering from the rollercoaster that is reporting on the men's Tour de France.

The world's biggest bike race always takes a lot out of me. I manage the news on both our site and in the weekly magazine; attempting to keep up with the bike racing, generate content ideas, drive from start to finish to start to finish, sampling a new hotel every night, all whilst trying to remain a functioning human being is quite a pull. I wrote more than 60 articles last month; the riders are on another planet, but I certainly feel like a shell of a person at the end of the Tour.

Usually, then, the last thing I've wanted to do is go to another bike race – one Tour de France is enough for a summer. I've loved the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in its first four editions, but rarely have I wanted to be there, doing the whole thing again. This year, however, I was jealous of my peers and colleagues on the ground – Tom Davidson did excellent work for us once again. This year's race was an action-packed epic, my favourite stage event of the year.

In just nine days, the leader's jersey changed hands five times, and every stage was gripping; Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) might have won by a minute over Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) in the end, but that gap was eight seconds until the final attack on the final day. The Mont Ventoux stage was still the best, but it was run close by so many other great days.

It took the Tour's organisers, ASO, long enough to make this race a reality, but now in its fifth year, it has become the must-watch stage race of the season. The narratives are all there, the top riders battling each other, and a deserving winner in the end. It all still manages to seem fun, with a spark that is missing from so many other races. Part of this is down to the continuing novelty of the event, it’s still new and fresh, but that makes it all the more entertaining.

There was even the emergence of "beef" between Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney over the ending to stage eight, which adds to the whole tapestry. While we don't want bitter feuds, and certainly not the online abuse that was sent to Célia Gery, a proper sense of rivalry can improve the action.

It's tempting to call for a longer race, a tougher race, but looking at the nine days here, it seems like an almost perfect product as it is; some voices have even argued that it is too difficult already. The Tour de France Femmes can still do firsts, like the first Ventoux and first double winner, and it is bringing a whole new audience to the sport.

I watched the finale of stage nine to Nice in a rammed, slightly too warm, pub in Bristol, with a pleasingly mixed crowd. It's the kind of event that I could never imagine for the men's race, and included a young girl in the pub calling out “Demi, Demi, Demi, come on Demi” constantly, willing her favourite on. Fortunately for her, Vollering delivered. I'd have missed this if I was at the race, of course, but it was so uplifting to feel like I was part of something.

At home, I was engrossed in the action – well, all that I could of course given that only three of the nine stages were shown in full – but I was itching to be out there, unpicking the stories, being close up, seeing the effort put in by the best riders in the world. Rather than feeling exhausted from covering one Tour, I was energised to cover the race, and can't wait to throw my hat into the ring for next year.

Fortunately for us in England, 2027's race starts in Leeds, with three stages on home soil, meaning it will be easier than ever to watch the Femmes in person, and the Grand Départ will be live on free-to-air TV here too. I just want to be there.

This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.

The highs and lows of being an elite-level cyclist have been perfectly illustrated over the past 10 days by English track rider Will Tidball, who went from winning gold in the team pursuit at the Commonwealth Games to having a massive splinter removed from his backside after crashing.

The 25-year-old, who has also been a track world champion, had an eventful time in Glasgow, where he was a late super-sub for the race that earned him a gold medal, after England’s Josh Charlton was sick on his teammate's bike in the aftermath of a qualifying round.

His surprise inclusion helped propel the national team to victory in the final against Australia, with a performance that also saw the four-man lineup set a new Commonwealth Games record.

On his penultimate day of racing at the Games, however, Tidball was brought back to Earth with a bang, when he crashed and skidded along the wooden deck of the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome, collecting a 7.6cm splinter in his backside in the process – an injury that required medical attention.

"I just had nowhere to go and then I ended up on the floor and had a three-inch splinter in my backside, that wasn't particularly nice,” Tidball told the BBC.

The Devon-based rider was supposed to be competing the following day, but the shrapnel had other ideas. "I raced the next day but I had to pull out after the splint went into my glute, then suddenly I wasn't on my best form," he explained.

"I had to have surgery with a doctor, who scalpel-ed it out. I had stitches,” he continued. "But the good news is I have got a gold medal and then a massive splinter to put next to it... a little souvenir.”

On Instagram, Tidball wrote last week: "Sports the greatest humbler... From gold on Thursday to getting this removed from my bum tonight. I’ve had better Saturday nights."

Back at home, Tidball will make an appearance in Exmouth at 7pm on Thursday, with members of the public having been invited to join him for a meet-and-ride at the Exeter Aces cycle speedway. Note: this is a BYO tweezers event.

The 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift broke TV records in its host country, fuelling calls for the whole race to be broadcast in full.

The fifth edition of the race boasted a 32.9% audience share on average in France, meaning almost a third of TV viewers were tuned into the race, which was won by Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez).

The data, released by host broadcaster France Télévisions on Monday, showed that the Tour had captured more of the TV audience, with the 2025 race averaging a 31.6% share. As many as 23.2 million French people watched at least a minute of the race.

The daily average of viewers for the Tour de France Femmes was down slightly, with 2.6 million viewers a day rather than 2.7 million, but that can be partly attributed to a lack of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot in the yellow jersey. The French Visma-Lease a Bike rider did not start stage eight after a disappointing defence of her title.

All these records were despite only three of the nine stages being given full broadcasts – stages one, five and nine – with hours missing from the the starts of the remaining six stages.

Data for the rest of the world is yet to be released, but it is proof that the Tour has already become a big part of the French sporting calendar; the men's Tour de France averaged 35.1% of audience share over its 21 stages, with every stage broadcast in full.

The peak viewership came on Friday 7 August's stage seven, when Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney stormed to a historic victory atop Mont Ventoux. An average audience share of 41.5% tuned in, with the viewers topping at 5.1 million; this stage was not broadcast in full, and was on a Friday.

Sunday's final stage saw a peak of 3.5 million people in France, with a 35.8% audience share watching Vollering complete her challenge in Nice.

Last week, race director Marion Rousse told Cycling Weekly that she and the race organiser, ASO, were giving “serious consideration” to broadcasting the race in full.

“What’s certain is that I’ve discussed this at length with France Télévisions [who produce the broadcast for the race, commissioned by ASO], and we’re giving serious consideration to broadcasting all the stages in full in the future because the women deserve it, and because it works well in terms of audience figures,” Rousse said.

“We’re currently giving it real consideration, which is a step forward. Things are moving in the right direction.”

After 100 miles of chaotic racing, the 2026 Beaumont Trophy was decided by the smallest of margins, when Tim Shoreman of Wheelbase-CabTech-Castelli edged out Ollie Wood (Rapha Cycling Club) to win by a tyre width in a thrilling sprint finish.

Early on in the four-lap, rain-strafed race, a 10-man breakaway group established what seemed to be an unbridgeable gap of 3 minutes and 40 seconds. A group of eight riders gave chase, Wheelbase-CabTech-Castelli’s Tom Martin among them, with the team’s National Road Series leader, Tom Armstrong, caught back in the peloton.

But then, just under 60 miles into the race, a large crash caused the event to be neutralised for 40 minutes, and after the restart, Shoreman says the dynamic completely changed.

“I think the crash shook everyone up,” he told Cycling Weekly. “I don't know what caused it. I was behind it and I went through the middle. It felt like there were multiple crashes happening at the same time – there was a crash on the right, there were people on the left and people in front crashing… They ran out of ambulances.”

The race route was shortened, with the small lap removed, and it felt like a complete reset, says Shoreman. “Some people don't come out of a stop like that so well and it takes a bit of time to get warmed up.”

“After that, we had to get together as a team and try and ride it back to protect Tom’s series lead. So we took control of the race. Once I made it over the Ryals for the final time, I knew I was in with a shout of winning. My teammates – Aaron, Dec, Tom and Adam – did a fantastic leadout.”

In the end, it was a dual between Shoreman, who has just been competing at the Commonwealth Games, and the Olympian Ollie Wood.

“I wasn't really sure what would happen in the sprint,” admits Shoreman. “It's quite an awkward one. Like it's quite twisty into the finish. So you have to go quite early. But I thought I’d messed up, and gone too early.

“Ollie was the obvious person in the group that would be really fast, so he was who I was looking at. We were next to each other in the final few kilometres, fighting for wheels. In the sprint, I looked across and he was right there. I was looking down at his wheel and I could see that I'd managed to get to the line just before him.”

John Bardsley (Private Member) took third place, and Tom Armstrong finished 13th, to take a lead of 45 points into the final race of the series next weekend, at the North Yorkshire Grand Prix.

It took courage to attack early in the rain-sodden 75-mile Curlew Cup at the weekend, but that’s exactly what Nicola Quaye did, and the strategy paid off for the teenage rider, who only returned to racing this season after taking the last four years off because she couldn’t be bothered with the training.

"I started riding again in August last year, and training from around October time," Quaye told Cycling Weekly. "But, like I've never had a coach. I've done it all myself."

Quaye might be self-trained and coached, but she went into the Curlew Cup with a game plan, which worked out better than even she could have imagined.

"I wanted to do a breakaway, because it was my last race of the season," she says. "The plan was, do it early, thinking they'll catch me and then I'll still have legs for the sprint… But I didn't need that."

The 360cycling rider made her move halfway around the first of three laps, before the route-defining climb of the Ryals. By the beginning of the second lap, the young Manx rider’s lead had grown to 90 seconds, but with Lily Martin (Loughborough Lightning) pulling hard, the peloton started reeling her in.

“My main goal was to just get back around to the finish line [to start the next lap],” recounts Quaye. “When I got there, I still had a reasonably big gap, so I thought maybe I can get round to do the Queen of the Mountain again… I'm not a particularly good climber, but I thought, if I could do it by myself, then I might stand a chance of getting it.

“And so I went around again, and they still hadn't caught me. I thought, ‘Oh, this is looking good’. But I was starting to tire at that point. With one lap to go, I went through and they told me the gap was closing. So I was like, ‘Do I sit up? Do I keep going?’”

Halfway around the final lap, she had some help in making that decision. Arabella Blackburn (Handsling Alba Development) bridged across to Quaye and the pair worked together to pull away, re-establishing a 90-second gap.

“We came to the last climb and I thought 'this is where she's going drop me',” says Quaye. “But luckily, I held onto her wheel the whole way up. I knew I'd be strong after the climb because that was the bit of the course that really suited me.

“So I just put in a nice long effort. We switched a few times, and then with 1.5km to go, I flicked my elbow and she didn't come through and I thought ‘I'm going to be leading this all the way to the finish now’.

In the end, Quaye beat Blackburn by a couple of metres, securing her first ever National A victory, and winning the Queen of the Ryals competition to boot. And it may just have reignited her desire to do more racing.

“I want to try a bit more circuit racing,” she tells me. “I definitely want to try a few more road races, but I think I'll be more selective with the ones I choose.”

And what made her take such a long break, at such a young age, I want to know?

“I started a full-time job as a nail technician, so I didn't have time to train,” she explains. “But then, when I was a youth, I never really trained. I always got good results, but I could never be bothered to do the training. So I felt like, once I got to a certain level, it was like… you've either got a train or not do it anymore. I finished 6th form, started a full-time job and I just gave it up.”

“But in August last year, I started getting an itch to do it again. So, I went out for a ride and… I mean, it wasn't a very successful ride by any means, but it just got me hooked again and I kept doing it.

“I like data, so the fact I could see my improvement kept me going. I don't have a coach. I've adapted my training to fit me perfectly. It's obviously worked out."

Demi Vollering's FDJ United-Suez team took home €77,080 (£65,949/$89,035) in prize money from the 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, leaving the race top of the prize list.

A total of €260,750 (£223,113/$301,192) was on offer for the 21 teams at the race, awarded based on performance. Teams that did well on the general classification or won stages populate the top of the table, but six teams won less than €1,000, with Mayenne Monbana My Pie bottom, without anything.

A large part of FDJ's winnings come from Vollering's yellow jersey triumph. She earned €50,000; combined with the money won for three stage victories, this is why FDJ sit top of the table.

However, FDJ's haul is less than a 10th of what the most successful team at the men's Tour de France, UAE Team Emirates-XRG, received. Last month, the team of Tadej Pogačar won €832,750, including €500,000 alone for Pogačar winning overall.

While the women's race is nine stages, rather than the 21 for the men, the prize money works out at €28,972 per stage for the Tour de France Femmes, as opposed to €109,523 per stage for the men's Tour de France. Analysed per kilometre raced, there was €708 of prize money per km at the men's race, compared to €222 per km at the Femmes.

The Tour de France Femmes' race director Marion Rousse has previously defended the prize money disparity, pointing out that women's cycling has come a long way. "The most important thing is being able to live off your passion rather than just focusing on prize money that does not provide for a sustainable income," she is reported to have said last year.

"When you compare the prize funds, the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift actually boasts a larger prize pool than the Critérium du Dauphiné for an equivalent number of race days."

All prize money is traditionally shared around a team, rather than going to the individual winners, and all riders at the Tour de France Femmes are subject to minimum salaries, with many earning much more; Vollering's deal with FDJ-Suez deal was understood to be worth around €900,000.

For Women's WorldTour riders, the minimum €38,000 per year for employed riders past their first year and €31,768 for employed neo-pros, while for self-employed riders, the minimums are €62,320 and €52,000 respectively.

For ProTeams, the minimum is €18,392 for an employed neo-pro, €20,000 for someone past their first year, and €30,162 for a self-employed neo-pro, and €36,080 for a self-employed rider past their first year.

How is the prize money allocated?

Prize money at the Tour de France Femmes is weighted heavily on each rider’s placing in the overall standings. The yellow jersey winner received €50,000 – almost a quarter of the entire prize pot – while second place earned €25,000, third earned €10,000, and the winnings diminish down to €1,000 for 16th-20th place.

There are also sums on offer for the winners of each of the other three jerseys – green, polka dot and white. Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) took home the green jersey as the winner of the points classification, and netted €3,000. The same sum went to Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) as the Queen of the Mountains. Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM) also got €3,000 for best young rider. In the mountains and points classifications, there was money awarded down to fifth, while in the young rider's competition, that went down to €500 for fourth – lucky Nienke Vinke (SD Worx-Protime). Each day a rider spends in a distinctive jersey netted them €800.

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) won the overall combativity award as well as finishing second, taking home €2,000 for the former. Meanwhile, Juliette Berthet (FDJ United-Suez) won "best teammte" according to the jury, which got her and her team €1,500.

The team classification, awarded to the team with the best cumulative time of its top three-riders in the GC, means prize money too. UAE Team L'IMAD, with three riders in the top seven overall, won this, meaning they got a bonus €6,000, while Lidl-Trek in second got €4,000, and FDJ United-Suez in third won €2,500. For being the first team on each stage, there was €200 a day,

Prize money is also awarded after every stage based on each rider’s placing: €4,000 for the stage winner, €2,000 for second place, €1,000 for third, all the way down to €200 for 20th.

Riders also had the chance to win between €30 and €160 for being first over classified climbs, and €120 for being first at each intermediate sprint, €70 for second, and €30 for third,

The tension that followed a heated Stage 8 finale between Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) and Demi Vollering’s FDJ United-SUEZ team appears to have been settled, despite animated words between the two Tour de France Femmes rivals in the opening kilometres of Stage 9.

TV cameras caught Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney riding alongside one another early in Sunday’s final stage having a conversation. Vollering later confirmed that she had approached her rival to clear the air over the previous day’s controversial finale.

"It was good that we had a talk together," Vollering, draped in yellow, said after the stage. "It was all good in the end."

Niewiadoma-Phinney similarly suggested the matter had been resolved between the riders.

"Sometimes it’s nice for us riders to talk through things and maybe leave the media out of it," she said. "At the end of the day, there’s so much going on when you’re full gas.

"We’ve been competing together for years, and we will be competing for the next year or so. None of us ever wants to have any sort of beef."

The discussion followed a bitter end to Stage 8, when Niewiadoma-Phinney was furious with FDJ rider Célia Gery after feeling she had been blocked and pushed into the barriers by the French champion during the finale.

Niewiadoma-Phinney publicly confronted Gery after the finish and subsequently criticised the French rider and FDJ’s actions, saying she had lost all respect for the team over the incident.

Vollering said Sunday that FDJ had never intended to block Niewiadoma-Phinney and that Gery’s line had instead been dictated by the road.

"I went to Kasia this morning to say that we never had the intentions to block her," Vollering explained. "It was also a tricky corner. There was a pothole in the middle, so it was only one way to take this line, and Célia had no other choice.

"Célia also, in this moment, didn’t realise she did anything wrong."

The controversy spiralled overnight on social media, and FDJ-Suez's Director Sportif Lars Boom said that Gery even received death threats.

"[Gery] got a lot of nasty messages, which makes me always very angry, especially because she’s such a young girl still, and we should always protect young people from these kinds of stupid actions from people who don’t think and just send a message," Vollering revealed.

"It’s very sad to think that you go to somebody’s profile and send them threatening messages. I can really not understand this, but it makes me very angry. And she had a really rough time."

The FDJ leader said she had been disappointed by how publicly the criticism had been directed at an individual rider while emotions were still running high.

"I wanted to have a chat with Kasia about this also because I was just a bit disappointed that she let all the emotions out like that about a rider and saying their name," Vollering said.

"You should always try to avoid these kinds of things. First of all, we are riders, and then next to it, we are human beings, we are real persons. If you say somebody’s name or you really attack somebody like this, it really hurts somebody and can really do bad things to people."

There was little time for either rider to dwell on the dispute as the stakes were as high as they can get. Vollering started the 99.2km final stage with a mere eight seconds over Niewiadoma-Phinney on general classification, leaving the yellow jersey still very much in play on a course featuring four ascents of the Col d’Èze.

Asked how she had managed to shut out the controversy with the Tour still on the line, Vollering offered a simple solution.

"Don’t go on social media. That helps a lot," she said.

On the final ascent of the Col d’Èze, Vollering made the decisive move around 800 metres from the summit, with an acceleration to which Niewiadoma-Phinney had no response. Vollering crested the top with an 18-second advantage and continued to extend it to well over a minute on the descent into Nice to claim her second Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift victory.

By the time the celebrations began, any lingering animosity appeared to have disappeared, with the two rivals embracing and chatting amicably.

 "[Demi] makes me work harder and then dream to come back here and get the yellow jersey again," Niewiadoma-Phinney said.

Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney have now both finished on the final podium in all five editions of the Tour de France Femmes since its 2022 revival. They've also both won the Tour, so while the tension from Stage 8 appears to have been put to rest, the rivalry between the pair is certainly going nowhere.

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney put in an all-time best climbing performance when she won on Mont Ventoux at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. She dropped the entire peloton, claimed the stage by more than a minute, and rode herself into the yellow jersey.

Fans were confused, then, when she uploaded her ride to Strava, and didn’t have the fastest recorded women's time – the QOM. That honour instead went to Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L’IMAD), who finished third on the day, with a time of 1:07:44 on the official 20.74km ‘Mont Ventoux (par Bédoin)’ segment.

When Cycling Weekly questioned the Italian about the QOM on Saturday, she said she only had it “probably because Kasia didn’t publish yet”. But Niewiadoma-Phinney had published by that point. Why did she not take the crown?

“I think I did,” the Canyon-Sram rider told Cycling Weekly quizzically on Sunday, during her press conference for finishing runner-up overall. “I think so, because I was looking at it also. That’s the one – because there are a few different segments – the one that Longo has right now?

“I was like nearly two minutes faster,” she continued. “[The QOM] is there, but it’s not loading for some reason. I don’t know why.”

The answer, it turned out, lay in Niewiadoma-Phinney’s Strava privacy settings; due to hiding the ends of her rides, her file appeared to finish a few hundred metres short of Ventoux’s summit. This meant her QOM time on the segment was not recorded on the public leaderboards.

Asked if she will now amend the file to secure the QOM, Niewiadoma-Phinney smiled: “Oh yeah.”

A surreal scene then unfolded in the media centre when Longo Borghini, who was waiting for her press conference for finishing third, raised her hand to ask a question.

“Hi Kasia, it’s Elisa Longo Borghini from UAE Team L’IMAD,” she began. “I want to ask you a question: can you not upload your Strava segment? I have the QOM and I’d like to keep it.”

Laughing, Niewiadoma-Phinney said: “It depends how many drinks you buy me for that.” Longo Borghini replied: “It depends how cheap drunk you are… We can make a deal later.”

Seven of the top 10 women's Strava times on Mont Ventoux were set on Friday during stage seven of the Tour de France Femmes.

As it stands, and before Niewiadoma-Phinney has updated her file, Paula Blasi (UAE Team L'IMAD) is second, Kim Le Court Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) fourth, with Marion Bunel (Visma-Lease a Bike), Thalita de Jong (Human Powered Health), Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal) and Maeva Squiban (UAE Team L'IMAD) also featuring on the leaderboard.

Reflecting on her entire Tour performance, Niewiadoma-Phinney said she was “happy and satisfied” with her second place, because she was confident she had given her “absolute best”.

“We came here to fight for the best possible result and, I mean, I won on Mont Ventoux, and I feel like that was the biggest day of my life, cycling-wise,” she said. “I’m super proud and happy about it.”

After nine epic stages of racing, Demi Vollering has won the Tour de France Femmes for the second time in her career, making history as the first rider to win two editions of the race.

The FDJ United-SUEZ rider sealed the overall victory by winning the final stage around Nice, as she dropped her main general classification rival Kasia Niewiadoma on the last ascent of the Col d’Èze with 16km to go, before going solo to the finish on the Promenade des Anglais.

“I’ve never won in the yellow jersey before,” Vollering said in her post-race interview. “It’s incredible the people I have around me. It’s not only the dream to win in yellow here and win a second Tour de France, but it’s the dream to live this life and work hard together with people with a lot of passion, I think that’s the whole dream.”

After her triumph atop Mont Ventoux two days prior, Niewiadoma tried everything to snatch back the yellow jersey on the final stage after her Canyon-SRAM team had attempted to put the Vollering under pressure throughout the day. However, the Polish rider was simply unable to match the strength of her rival on the final climb and was ultimately forced to settle for second place in the general classification.

After some controversy on stage 8 surrounding a blocking move by Vollering’s teammate Célia Gery on Niewiadoma before the final climb and subsequent comments about the incident, the Dutchwoman was keen to make a demonstration on the final stage and show that she was the strongest rider in the race.

“I had to try to attack and go alone,” she stated. “I wanted to make it clear that we didn’t win because of an incident yesterday. That’s not what I believe and I wanted to make it clear that we as a team deserve to win a beautiful Tour de France Femmes with humility and pride.”

In the battle for the final spot on the podium, a nasty crash for Marlen Reusser with 60km to go saw the Movistar rider fall off the podium and out of the top ten entirely, as she finished more than twenty-four minutes behind Vollering on the stage, which handed third place to Elisa Longo Borghini.

Meanwhile, Niewiadoma’s teammate Antonia Niedermaier finished fourth overall and won the white jersey as the best young rider, whilst Lorena Wiebes won the intermediate sprint on the final stage to secure the green jersey and Puck Pieterse finished the race safely to win the polka dot jersey.

How It Happened

At 99.2km in length, the final stage of this year’s Tour de France Femmes was the shortest road stage of the race. Centred around Nice, the riders took on four ascents of the Col d’Èze before a descent to the finish along the Promenade des Anglais.

They were climbing right from the start, as the first ascent of the Col d’Èze (7.7km at 5.9%) began straight out of the neutral zone. UAE Team L’IMAD were interested in getting a rider up the road early in the stage, with attacks from Dominika Włodarczyk and Maëva Squiban on the opening climb.

However, the pace being set by the teams at the head of the peloton meant that each move was brought back quickly, whilst several riders were being dropped out the back, as fatigue from the previous eight stages was beginning to set in.

On the descent, a misjudged corner for Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM) saw her hit the deck, but the British national champion was back on her bike quickly and able to chase back on to the leading group. Franziska Koch (FDJ United-SUEZ) was the only other rider affected by the crash, but she just about managed to keep herself upright.

As they came off the descent and re-entered Nice, Malwina Mul (Cofidis) and Paula Ostiz (Movistar) formed a two-rider breakaway at the head of the race, with the former taking maximum points at the intermediate sprint, whilst Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) took third place to mathematically secure the green jersey.

It wasn’t long after that the leading duo were caught as they went onto the second ascent of the Col d’Èze, as Zoe Bäckstedt had recovered from her earlier crash and went to the front to set the pace for her team leader Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM).

An incredible ride from the British national champion saw her whittle down the leading group, dropping riders such as Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal), Évita Muzic (FDJ United-SUEZ), Magdeleine Vallieres (EF Education-Oatly) and Célia Gery (FDJ United-SUEZ), before Marlen Reusser (Movistar) was then distanced with 1.7km to go on the climb and her position on the podium was put into jeopardy.

A gap of nearly a minute had opened up to the Swiss rider as they went onto the descent, before disaster then struck, as Reusser crashed hard through a right-hand corner. Fortunately, she was able to get back on her bike and finish the race, though she would ultimately lose nearly twenty-five minutes and fall out of the top ten entirely.

The first moves from the lead group came on the third ascent of the Col d’Èze, with Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) putting in a small acceleration, before Isabella Holmgren (Lidl-Trek) went on the attack with 46km to go.

After nearly being taken out by a spectator dressed as a panda as she launched her move, the Canadian rider quickly settled into her rhythm and began to establish an advantage over the group behind, which was being led by Juliette Berthet (FDJ United-SUEZ) in service of her team leader Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ), as the French rider was the only remaining teammate for the yellow jersey.

As she went over the top of the climb, Holmgren had more than a minute of an advantage over the yellow jersey group, but then gradually lost time on the descent as Berthet continued to lead the chase behind, and as she went onto the final climb her lead had been cut to half a minute.

The final ascent of the Col d’Èze (6km at 7.6%) was different to the previous three ascents, as it took the riders a shorter but steeper route up the climb, with the Col des Quatre Chemins forming the first part, with gradients of over twelve percent, before a right turn to rejoin the road to the summit.

It was clear that the battle for the stage win and the overall victory would be decided here, and Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM) immediately went to the front to set up a move for Niewiadoma.

Meanwhile, the gap to Holmgren had continued to shrink and she was ultimately caught with 4km to go on the climb. It was at this moment that Niewiadoma decided to launch her move to drop Vollering with a punchy attack.

However, the yellow jersey stayed glued to her wheel, matching each acceleration with relative ease as she remained seated in her saddle, before launching an attack of her own with 3km left on the climb.

With both riders trading blows but neither able to drop the other, they continued to stamp their way up the climb, but as they made the right turn back on to the circuit from the previous laps, it looked as though the two could not be separated.

However, with only a few hundred metres left to go on the climb, Vollering made one final move with an initial acceleration out of the saddle before settling into a high-cadence seated effort that finally cracked Niewiadoma.

As the Polish rider sat back in her saddle a small gap began to open up, and with a quick look around, Vollering pounced on the opportunity with another attack out of the saddle. As the gradient began to flatten out, the Dutch rider now had the upper hand and began to time trial her way along the plateau before the beginning of the descent.

Meanwhile, it was clear that Niewiadoma was suffering and her yellow jersey ambitions were quickly fading away, with the once small gap quickly becoming a chasm, as she did not have the power to match Vollering.

She was then joined on the descent by the chasing group containing Niedermaier and Holmgren, as well as Paula Blasi (UAE Team L’IMAD), Niamh Fisher-Black (Lidl-Trek) and Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L’IMAD), the last of whom was now on to finish third overall after Reusser’s misfortune earlier in the stage.

It was now evident that Vollering would not be caught, as she once again proved to be a level above her competitors. As she came off the final descent into Nice and rolled onto the Promenade des Anglais, she celebrated not only her stage win and a second overall victory at the Tour de France Femmes, lifting her bike aloft and letting out a triumphant scream after she crossed the finish line.

Behind, Blasi outsprinted Niewiadoma to finish runner-up on the stage, but it was the Polish rider that had to settle for second place in the general classification, whilst a late puncture for Longo Borghini gave her the same time as the rest of the group and meant that she moved up onto the podium in third place.

Results

Tour de France Femmes 2026 Stage Nine: Nice > Nice (99km)

1. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, in 02:44:43
2. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD, +1:04
3. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM
4. Niamh Fisher-Black (NZl) Lidl-Trek, all at same time
5. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM, +1:06
6. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek, +1:08
7. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +1:04*
8. Femke de Vries (Ned) Visma-Lease a Bike, +1:57
9. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD
10. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, all at same time

*Given same time due to a puncture in the final 3km

General Classification after Stage Nine

1. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, in 30:54:51
2. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, +1:18
3. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +4:19
4. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM, +5:10
5. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD, +6:13
6. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, +6:41
7. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD, +7:53
8. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek, +9:12
9. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, +14:04
10. Niamh Fisher-Black (NZl) Lidl-Trek, +15:14

After her triumph in the time trial on stage 4 and a stint in the yellow jersey, Marlen Reusser (Movistar) slipped from third to 14th in the general classification at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, after a crash on the descent of the Col d’Èze with around 60km to go on the final stage.

The Swiss rider had a firm grip on the podium going into the stage, with an advantage of nearly two minutes over Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD) in fourth.

However, after being dropped by the favourites and crashing, she rode near the back of the race, flanked by five of her Movistar team-mates.

She ultimately crossed the line 109th, 24 minutes and 35 seconds after the stage and race winner Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez).

"I think crash-wise, she's OK. It wasn't a high-speed crash or anything," her Movistar sports director, Kelvin Dekker, said at the finish.

"She took the corner a bit weird, and then I think she crashed over a little bump in the middle of the road. She was mainly really disappointed because she saw the podium getting away, of course, in that moment.

"On the ground, she was fully realising that it would be gone. This was mainly the reason she was longer on the ground, just being really sad and disappointed. I think that's the feeling that will stay a bit longer than the wounds from the crash."

Beyond the finish line on the Promenade des Anglais, Reusser ground to a halt in front of her Movistar soigneurs and began to cry. Her team-mates each took it in turns to console her.

"We start as a team and we finish as a team, and in the end, we had everyone there to support her mentally and get her over the line," Dekker said.

The final stage of the Tour de France Femmes featured a circuit around Nice with four ascents of the Col d’Èze. Reusser looked to be in a strong position with multiple of her Movistar teammates around her, but as they approached the summit of the second ascent she suddenly found herself isolated in the group of favourites.

An infernal pace set by Zoe Bäckstedt in service of her Canyon-SRAM leader Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney whittled down the group to a select number of riders, and it was not long before Reusser also found herself distanced off the back of the group with 67km to go.

As they went over the top of the climb and onto the descent, the gap grew and Reusser had to put in a massive effort to get back to the group. Clearly pushing hard to catch back on, she fell through a right-hand corner and found herself on ground, with her podium hopes extinguished.

In Reusser's place, Longo Borghini completed the podium behind Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney,

Demi Vollering said Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney “is not the one who can really say something about [fair play]”, after the Canyon-Sram rider accused Vollering's team-mate of blocking her on stage eight of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Niewiadoma-Phinney confronted FDJ United-Suez's Célia Gery beyond the finish line of Saturday's stage, accusing her of forcing her into the barriers when Vollering launched her race-winning attack. “If [FDJ] want to compete, they should compete [with] fair play,” Niewiadoma-Phinney later said. “Honestly, I lost all respect for them for that.”

Ahead of the final stage in Nice, Vollering hit back at Niewiadoma-Phinney during an interview in the mixed zone.

“She really attacked my team-mate, and I think it’s not so fair to do that so high in emotions,” the yellow jersey wearer told TNT Sports.

“I didn’t forget about what she did when I was on the ground two years ago, so if she’s speaking about fair play, then I think she is not the one that can really say something about that.”

The incident Vollering referred to came on stage five of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes, when the Dutchwoman crashed with 6.5km to go, and lost her yellow jersey to Niewiadoma-Phinney, who sprinted to second place on the stage.

The Polish rider said at the time that crashes are “an unfortunate part of racing”. She went on to win that edition of the Tour by four seconds.

Vollering also came out to the defence of her team-mate Gery on Sunday after the 20-year-old received abuse on social media following the blocking accusations.

The incident sparked a debate among cycling fans as to whether Gery had committed any wrongdoing. Some social media users insulted the French champion and called for her to be disqualified from the race.

“I find it really sad that we attack each other like this after the finish line,” Vollering said of Niewiadoma-Phinney's comments.

“Célia never did something on purpose. It was also a very tricky corner – there was a pothole in the middle – so there was only one line to take, and Kasia chose to go into the corner next to Célia.

“I feel really sad about what is happening at the moment and how much shit Célia gets over her. She’s still so young. We really should protect her. It’s a very nasty world out there on social media, and it really worries me sometimes how it’s developing. You know, you can really tear a person down like that, and it should never be like this.”

Vollering led Niewiadoma-Phinney by eight seconds going into Sunday's final stage.

Also speaking ahead of the stage, Niewiadoma-Phinney defended her comments from Saturday: “I expressed my opinion. I know what's right, let's say, and what's not maybe necessarily right. It's not that I make things up, and I think I expressed what I had, and nothing has changed since that.”

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram) accused FDJ United-Suez of blocking her against the barriers in the finale of stage eight of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift as she tried to follow Demi Vollering’s stage-winning attack.

The Polish rider, who took the yellow jersey on Mont Ventoux on Friday, lost her race lead in Nice after she was unable to close the gap to Vollering.

Beyond the seafront finish line, Niewiadoma-Phinney confronted FDJ United-Suez’s French champion Célia Gery, and was captured by Wielerflits saying: “Why did you do that? Why did you close me to the barriers? Was it part of the plan?”

The incident is understood to have happened with around 6.5km to go in the stage, when Vollering launched her first of three accelerations.

Helicopter footage showed Gery pacing on the front of the group, before the camera angle switched, and after a slight broadcasting delay, Vollering appeared on the attack. Although the exact moment was not clearly shown on TV, Niewiadoma-Phinney said she was impeded by the French champion.

“I definitely thought that [FDJ United-Suez] would do something,” the Canyon-Sram rider said. “They always have a plan, so I wasn’t surprised. I was super annoyed at the beginning of the climb because Gery, on purpose, just blocked me to the barriers, where I had to stop pedalling.

“I feel like if they want to compete, they should compete [with] fair play, and not look to close me into the barriers, because I feel like it’s so childish. Honestly, I lost all the respect for them for that.”

Niewiadoma-Phinney’s frustration was clear when she returned to her Canyon-Sram team bus and vented to her sports directors. Four members of team staff then huddled around a telephone to rewatch the incident, with a view of sharing footage with ASO, the race organiser.

“If it was unfair, then there’s a VAR [video assistant referee], there’s a jury, and they will act on it,” Canyon sports director Rolf Aldag explained.

There were ultimately no sanctions in the jury’s post-stage report, which made no mention of the incident.

Asked for their response to Niewiadoma-Phinney’s comments, FDJ United-Suez said they believed there was no wrongdoing on their part.

“I spoke with Célia about it. She didn’t block her, she just went back onto Demi’s wheel,” sports director Lars Boom told The Athletic.

Boom explained the plan was for Gery to follow Vollering’s attack in order to help her leader later in the race. “Blocking is not on my mind,” he said. “What’s on my mind is that Demi needed to enter the corner first with Célia on her wheel. We never talked about blocking. Of course, we want to race fair.”

Stephen Delcourt, Vollering's team manager, echoed the same sentiment. “Demi went first into the corner to take more speed, and Célia just went to the right. There is no fault of Célia,” he said.

“I understand when you are Kasia you search for excuses just after the line, because you never expect to lose yellow today,” Delcourt added. “It doesn’t change the vision that I have for Kasia; she’s a really, really great champion.”

Asked for her view of the incident in her stage winner's press conference, Vollering said: “I cannot say anything about this because apparently it happened behind me, and I don’t have eyes on my back, and neither does Célia – she doesn’t have eyes on her back.”

“I’m sure [Gery] didn’t do it on purpose. I think Kasia also knows deep in her heart that that kind of thing just happens sometimes in racing. It’s the shit part of racing and also the tricky part of racing.”

The Tour de France Femmes will come to a close on Sunday with a final stage starting and finishing in Nice. The route counts four ascents of Col d'Èze (7.7km at 5.9%).

Vollering goes into the final day with an eight-second lead over Niewiadoma-Phinney, and 72 seconds over Marlen Reusser (Movistar).

In a dramatic finale, Demi Vollering launched a savage acceleration to break the resolve of yellow jersey Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney and seize the race lead on the penultimate day of the race.

The FDJ United-SUEZ rider attacked with 6km to go on an uncategorised ascent, breaking Canyon-SRAM's leader and Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team l'Imad) in the final few metres. She extended her lead as the road swivelled and swirled into Nice to move into the race lead by eight seconds.

Longo Borghini out-sprinted Niewiadoma-Phinney to take second place on the stage, with a chase group led home by Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) 38 seconds down.

Vollering was in second place on the overall classification coming into the stage, 15 seconds down on Niewiadoma-Phinney, having been put to the sword by the Pole on the mythical climb to Mont Ventoux on Friday. The pendulum swung rapidly back in the direction of the Dutchwoman on the road to Nice.

Vollering said afterwards that she still believed that she could win the race despite the disappointment of Ventoux..

"In a stage race you live day by day, so you can be disappointed overnight, but then the next morning you need to put on a new mask and you go again. You try again, you make a plan with the team," she said.

"Somehow we made it happen. I think this is to prove that if you really believe in something, if you really dream big about something, then it doesn't matter what it needs to take, how much pain it will cost you, together with good people around you, you will make it happen. You just need to have the good people around you," Vollering added, praising her team mates.

The race for the yellow jersey at the 2026 Tour de France Femmes will come down to a final stage around Nice with four ascents of the challenging Col d'Eze climb to be negotiated.

Despite moving into the lead so late-on in the race, Vollering is aware that the battle for yellow is not yet over.

"Tomorrow it's gonna be super hard, of course. It's what I said since the beginning of the Tour, still everything can happen on the last day. At least I start in yellow tomorrow, and it's already a dream coming true."

'I won two stages and I have yellow on my shoulders for this moment, so that's already super special. We're going to try everything to keep that yellow tomorrow."

How it happened

There was big news on the airwaves before the penultimate stage of the 2026 Tour de France got underway in Sisteron, as defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) withdrew from the race due to illness.

Canyon-SRAM were keen to allow a breakaway to drift up the road never to be seen again due to Vollering's close proximity to Niewiadoma-Phinney's lead.

It was Loes Adegeest (Lidl-Trek) and Maeva Squiban (UAE Team l’Imad) who took up the mantle, growing a lead that hit a maximum of 6:30 with various teams, including FDJ United-SUEZ, pursuing behind in the hopes of setting up a finish suited to their leaders.

The race between break and peloton appeared in the balance into the final third of the day, with the gap slowly coming down. As the race entered the crucial final 20km, which included two category four ascents and a steep uncategorised rise which topped-out with 6km to go, the gap to the leaders was still around two minutes.

Approaching the first climb, the Côte de Colomars, the pace was increased in the peloton and the gap plummeted. Zöe Backstedt led the bunch onto the climb for Niewiadoma-Phinney to control things. Squiban crashed out of the breakaway on the descent, meaning Adegeest was forced to go alone. The Lidl-Trek rider held 40 seconds going into the last 10km.

Franziska Koch drove the peloton onto the final classified climb of the Côte de la Ginestière, looking to set up an opportunity for Vollering, with all the stage favourites on the wheel. Koch’s pace brought Adegeest back by the top of the climb, with only 20 riders still in touch with the front. Green jersey Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-ProTime) was dropped in the final kilometre of the Ginestière and Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike) had already been distanced.

The riders tackled the final steep kicker before a rapid descent into Nice with 6km left. Vollering attacked instantly and got an initial gap, before being closed down by Longo Borghini and Niewiadoma-Phinney. With that trio together, Vollering went again on the 17% ramps, going solo and cracking the yellow jersey at the top, but only with a five second advantage heading into a spaghetti-like descent.

Vollering was building her lead as the road went flat along the coastline, even as Longo Borghini worked with Niewiadoma-Phinney. She won the stage by 17 seconds, meaning that she now has a lead of eight seconds over the Pole heading into the final stage with bonus seconds factored in.

Results

Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2026 stage eight: Sisteron > Nice (175km)

1. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez in 4:02:39
2. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +17 seconds
3. Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, same time
4. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, +38 seconds
5. Lotte Kopecky (Bel) SD Worx-ProTime
6. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD
7. Sarah van Dam (Can) Visma-Lease a Bike
8. Noemi Rüegg (Swi) EF Education-Oatly
9. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD
10. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, all same time

General Classification after stage eight

1. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, in 28:10:18
2. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, + 8 seconds
3. Marlen Reusser (Sui) Movistar, +1:12
4. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +3:05
5. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM, +3:54
6. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, +4:34
7. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD, +5:05
8. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD, +5:46
9. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, +6:50
10. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek, +7:54

Citing illness, defending Tour de France Femmes champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot has pulled out of the 2026 edition of the race ahead of stage 8, which starts in Sisteron and finishes in Nice.

A day earlier, on stage 7’s finish on Mont Ventoux, the Visma-Lease a Bike rider lost 10:44 to winner Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM), finishing down in 18th place. Ferrand-Prévot was sitting 14th on the General Classification, 14:37 behind the yellow jersey at the time of her withdrawal.

“Unfortunately, Pauline was not feeling well this morning. In consultation with the medical staff, it has been decided that she will not start today,” the team said in a statement on its social media accounts.

“We wish Pauline a speedy recovery!” the statement added.

The Frenchwoman is the latest in a string of riders to pull out of the race due to illness.

Ferrand-Prévot had been off the pace for much of the week, enduring a particularly tough time trial on stage 4 , losing over two minutes to winner Marlen Reusser (Movistar).

“I did my best and I pushed as hard as I could. Now there’s nothing I can do,” Ferrand-Prévot told the media afterwards. “It was quite a lot of stress. Even though I finished far off, I still prepared a lot. I’m glad this day is over.”

On the following day, a lumpy stage between Mǎcon and Belleville-en-Beaujolais which featured no fewer than eight classified climbs, Ferrand-Prévot lost more time, finishing 2:35 behind Demi Vollering (FDJ United-SUEZ).

With Mont Ventoux always viewed as the decisive queen stage of the race, and Ferrand-Prévot dominating the high mountain stages in last year’s edition, there was always a ray of hope that the 34-year-old could rally and produce a winning performance. However, when she was dropped early on the Bald Mountain, it was clear that there would be no fairytale redemption.

In 2025, Ferrand-Prévot won the Tour de France Femmes on her first attempt after making an impressive return to road racing following several years focussed on racing the XCO mountain bike circuit.

She claimed the yellow jersey with a masterful performance on the penultimate stage’s mountain top finish on the Col de la Madeleine, before winning again on the final day to Châtel.

Ferrand-Prévot has not managed to hit the same heights this season and hasn’t yet recorded a win. Now, she departs her main goal of the year empty-handed.

It’s just after midday in the river-banked commune of La Voulte-sur-Rhône, and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney is daring to believe. “I’m not going to lie,” she begins, speaking to a TV crew at the start of stage seven of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, “the dream of mine is to win at the top of the climb. Mont Ventoux is so iconic that it would be a career-defining moment.”

It seems like a bold statement. Niewiadoma-Phinney, remember, has not made a habit of winning races; until Friday, she had never won a stage of a Grand Tour, and had only collected three victories in seven years. A win on Mont Ventoux? She’s more likely to lose time to her GC rivals, some scoff at the thought. But they’re fools for underestimating a former Tour champion.

You see, Niewiadoma-Phinney has done her homework. She’s reconned the climb three times, familiarised herself with all of its 16km of tarmac, and though she doesn’t tell the interviewer, she’s got an audacious plan: attack with 11km to go, and solo away.

If all the right notes are played in time, she’ll soar from third to first overall, and end the day in the yellow jersey.

Fast forward five hours. Niewiadoma-Phinney is lying on a concrete slab under the red-tipped transmitter tower at the summit of Mont Ventoux. She kisses her fingers and crosses her chest. She then sits up, and beams with a big, toothy smile.

A member of the race organisation is waiting beside her to take her to the podium, built on top of the coarse limestone gravel. The Canyon-Sram rider started the day trailing yellow by a minute and 17 seconds. Not only has she won the stage, but she now leads by 15 seconds. Here’s how she did it.

“Kasia is, you know her, a little bit all or nothing,” Rolf Aldag, Canyon-Sram director of sport, tells Cycling Weekly outside his team bus. It’s an attitude that has seen his rider come agonisingly close to victories (like her third place on stage five), but also makes her easy to bring on board with a plan. Canyon-Sram's big Tour de France plot was hatched last November; in a presentation to the team, they declared they were coming to win.

“There was no other logic,” says Aldag. “If you have a former winner, someone who’s always been on the podium, you can’t go there and say, ‘Let’s see what happens. Maybe fifth is a good place.’”

The race started well. Seventh on day one, Niewiadoma-Phinney kept pace with GC favourites Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Marlen Reusser (Movistar) on days two and three and then, amazingly, put in a career-best time trial performance on day four to stay within contention. Bolstered by the performance, Aldag began to sketch out a blueprint.

“[Newiadoma-Phinney and I] just randomly met at breakfast. Nobody was there. And I was like, ‘Well, what do you think? What is your self-belief? Where can we support? Do you trust yourself?’” he recalls.

On Ventoux, there was one clear option: “If we wanted to go for yellow, we couldn’t wait until they attacked. We needed to get out of the forest alone, with a decent gap… It was exactly as planned.”

At the foot of the climb, Niewiadoma-Phinney looked to her right and spotted her parents, who had come to surprise her. “I could see my dad crying,” she said, “and I thought I just needed to make them proud.”

It was only a few kilometres later that she made her winning move. It came just inside 10km to go, a counter to an acceleration by Vollering, that saw Niewiadoma-Phinney peel to the left, kick ahead, and immediately draw out a 10-second lead.

Vollering and Reusser looked at each other, but neither closed the gap. Within 2km, it grew to almost a minute. “They were playing games,” Aldag smiles. “That was exactly what we were hoping for.”

Niewiadoma-Phinney, too, had it all worked out. "My big idea was to make it to Chalet [Reynard] with 6km to go on my own, because I knew with the wind we had today, if someone was chasing behind they would try to stay on the wheel as much as possible,” she later revealed.

“Once I made it to Chalet, there was a lot of headwind, but I knew in the back they would just play the game.”

At that same point, a motorbike passed her and flashed her the time gap on a chalkboard. It showed she was closing in on taking the yellow jersey. She kicked out of the saddle, dropped back down low, and ploughed on through the lunar expanse.

“From the recon, I knew that the more speed you take into the corners, the more you get out of them, so I just tried to keep the momentum going,” she said.

Her team-mates shouted encouragement into their radios, hoping to do the same. “I really had no doubt that she would win it,” Antonia Niedermaier said post-stage. “I told her, ‘Kasia, you’re the strongest. I believe in you. You’re the queen.’”

Riding shotgun in the follow car, Aldag was also feeling confident. “We’re nearly at 2,000m. I think Kasia is super efficient here, and it’s day seven of the race. This is something you cannot forget,” he says. “Same day, same race, but on stage two would probably be a different outcome. But she’s so fatigue-resistant.”

Polka dot flags lapped against the snow marker posts that lead to the summit. By the finish line, fans teetered on their feet, blown by the gusts that traced down the final straight. Their eyes gazed back across mountain, and suddenly Niewiadoma-Phinney appeared, alone in the distance, charging around the final corner.

Vollering and Reusser chased behind, but the gap was too big. By the time they passed under the gantry, Niewiadoma-Phinney was already strewn out beyond it on the ground.

Niedermaier, sixth across the line, was the first to congratulate her. “You’re the queen,” she told her team leader, this time to her face, as the pair sat cross-legged and hugged.

Niewiadoma-Phinney laughed between gasps for air. “I said winning here would be a career-defining moment,” she recalled. “I feel like I can retire now.”

That retirement, however, will have to wait a few more days at least. Now back in the yellow jersey she took home in 2024, Niewiadoma-Phinney has two stages left to race, and a 15-second lead to defend. “I definitely expect a massive fight for everything,” she says. “Bonus seconds, basically everything. The gap is so small.”

Fortunately, she knows what it takes. Two years ago, when she won the Tour, she did so by just four seconds – the smallest winning margin in the history of both the men's and women's races. This year's finale could be even closer.

“Nice is going to be a big, big battle,” says Aldag, looking ahead to the weekend. “I would have loved to have 40 seconds, not 15, but it is what it is and we deal with it... It's all in to try and win the Tour.”

It was supposed to be the day things came full circle for Demi Vollering. A decade ago, on the slopes of Mont Ventoux, the then teenager scaled her first mountain by bike on a trip away with her speed skating team-mates. It was the moment she realised she had something special. She then transitioned to cycling, powered to the top of the sport, and, on Friday, returned to the limestone giant where it all began, this time within touching distance of the yellow jersey at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

The script was written. The finale scene would be uplifting: Vollering standing at the summit, applauded by the crowds, a tear in her eye. Instead, she couldn’t get away from the climb sooner.

The FDJ United-Suez rider spent the afternoon trying, and failing, to chase down the stage winner Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram) with Marlen Reusser (Movisar). She started the day 12 seconds off Reusser’s yellow jersey, and ended it 15 off Niewiadoma-Phinney’s.

A few hundred metres beyond the finish line, Vollering ground to a halt in a huddle of TV cameras. She downed a bottle of water, calmly put on a jacket, and then pierced through the crowd to descend 6km down to her team bus. She said nothing. The only sound the microphones captured was the roaring of the wind.

“I didn’t see her after the finish. So I don’t know exactly how she feels,” Nicolas Maire, Vollering’s sports director at FDJ, told Cyclingnews half an hour later.

Asked for his thoughts on how the stage panned out, Maire’s verdict was simple. “That was not the plan,” he said. “But at least we pushed her to fight until the line and to still believe that it’s possible on the next day.

“For sure, it is not what we expected. We were looking for a stage win, but I think Kasia was really, really strong, and she showed it. We will see what we can do in the next few days.”

So what went wrong on the Ventoux? Though chased by two of the peloton's finest climbers, Niewiadoma-Phinney managed to build a minute’s gap barely 3km into her 10km solo. Another 4km later, and the Canyon-Sram rider’s advantage had doubled, making her the virtual yellow jersey on the road, an honour she took for real at the summit. Surely a duo as strong as Vollering and Reusser could have caught her?

For Lars Boom, another of FDJ United-Suez’s sports directors, the problem stemmed from the pair “looking at each other too much”.

“You always know that Kasia will be there,” he said. “And you obviously know that you are a minute and five seconds ahead of her in the standings, but you also know that you can't let her ride too far alone. That's not only on us, but that's also on Marlen to control that, I think. But she's playing more with her [yellow] jersey.

“We did take initiative to make the race hard at the start, which suits Demi, but Marlen just let it go. She looked very quickly to Demi, and that is sometimes not so smart.”

Reusser later agreed that she and Vollering had been “stupid” with her tactics.

The Swiss rider, however, also pointed the finger at her old SD Worx team-mate, who she felt could have co-operated better. “Demi kept attacking super hard, and I kept telling her, ‘Don’t do this. Let’s just ride’,” Reusser said. “We had Kasia well in sight. We could for sure close the time.”

Instead, she said, she and Vollering got a “nice portion of lactic acid again and again in the legs”, and Niewiadoma-Phinney rode away.

It was only when Vollering had begun her warm down outside her team bus that she felt ready to speak to the media. Dutch broadcaster NOS was on hand to ask her about her day.

“I launched an attack, and then Kasia very cleverly went straight over the top of it. And then, well, I really should have closed the gap straight away,” Vollering rued.

"Afterwards, you always start to wonder a bit whether you really couldn’t do it, or whether that’s just what you thought at the time. But yes, that’s mainly where the disappointment lies.

“I hoped to be able to break away with Marlen and then catch up with Kasia, but, unfortunately, that didn’t work out.”

Another chance might come in the future for Vollering to close the loop on her Mont Ventoux tale. But on Friday, in pursuit with Reusser against Niewiadoma-Phinney’s dogged ride, she seemed to play her cards wrong.

Rather than winning the stage, her deficit in the GC grew by three seconds. “Until the finish line in Nice, all is possible,” FDJ sports director Maire said.

“I think Kasia took a good advantage today, but we’ll try to fight in the next few days, and see what Demi’s feeling is after this stage to see what we can do.”

With two stages remaining, this Tour de France Femmes is far from over.

Demi Vollering and her FDJ United-SUEZ teammates Juliette Berthet and Célia Gery were each fined CHF100 on Friday for public urination during stage 7 of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, which finished atop Mont Ventoux.

The offence falls under article 2.12.007, section 8.6 of the UCI regulations, which covers "unseemly or inappropriate behaviour", including undressing or urinating in public during a race.

At a Women’s WorldTour race such as the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the fine runs between CHF100 and CHF200. And while three FDJ riders received the minimum sanction, the fines do highlight some of the practical difficulties around nature breaks.

When and where are riders allowed to pee?

The UCI regulations are clear on what riders can be fined for, but offer little guidance on where and when riders are actually supposed to pee. There is no formal nature-break zone or designated time.

Instead, the peloton has traditionally governed itself through convention. Once a breakaway is established and the race settles down, riders may collectively choose a quieter section of road, away from towns and spectators, to stop. The bunch eases off, a group pulls over and, traditionally at least, nobody attacks.

But that is convention, not regulation, and modern racing does not always provide the lull required for it.

At this edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, much of the racing has been relentlessly aggressive, with attacks and counter-attacks beginning almost immediately. There have been precious few calm moments for the peloton to take a collective nature break.

Friday was, remarkably, one of the first.

"So many people [peed] today, I’m surprised there aren’t more [fines]," one rider told Cycling Weekly. "I feel like it’s the first stage we could even do that. Finally it wasn’t full gas from 0km."

For the women’s peloton, there is also the issue of mechanics to contend with.

Male riders can generally make a roadside stop relatively quickly without having to undress. If the race is moving quickly, some can even urinate while riding, moving to the edge of the road and occasionally relying on a teammate for a push.

For women, the process is more cumbersome. A rider generally needs to stop, dismount and lower her shorts enough to squat. Depending on her clothing, that may also mean undoing or removing part of her jersey. And with one-piece race suits becoming increasingly common, a nature break means undressing almost fully.

Finding a section of the course that is not considered "in public" can be difficult, too, particularly on a race such as the Tour de France Femmes where spectators line the road, television cameras rove through the convoy and, as on Friday's stage, there's a lot of exposed terrain.

Stopping can also have a competitive risk, something Vollering knows all too well.

At the 2023 Vuelta Femenina, Vollering and several SD Worx teammates stopped for a nature break just as Movistar began forcing the pace ahead of a crosswind section. Vollering, who had started the day in the red leader’s jersey, found herself chasing after the race split apart and eventually finished 1:04 behind the leaders. She lost the Vuelta to Annemiek van Vleuten the following day by just nine seconds.

To that end, a CHF100 fine may be a price riders are happy to pay if the yellow jersey is on the line. That, or simply keep quiet and let it flow.

As the remainder of the peloton trickled through the finish line on the summit of Mont Ventoux, Marlen Reusser (Movistar) stood barefoot against the Movistar team car, arms crossed, about 500 metres down the other side of the mountain.

The race lead and the yellow jersey conceded to Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM). She made no attempt to disguise how much that hurt.

“I’m just very disappointed,” Reusser said. “I really hoped that I could win the stage or keep the yellow. That's a hard pill to swallow.

"I think it was not possible. Kasia did really, really good. Congratulations to her, really, chapeau. And, yeah, I’m sad. I’m just sad."

The iconic Ventoux ascent came down to a battle of the three GC favourites. Starting the stage, Reusser was in yellow with a mere 12-second lead over Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez) and 1:17 on Niewiadoma-Phinney. Vollering tried to test her rivals early with small accelerations on the bends through the forest, but the others were quick to respond.

Taking advantage of the caginess between Vollering and Reusser, Niewiadoma-Phinney Next attacked with 9.7 kilometres to go.

Neither Reusser nor Vollering responded. They had a little time gap to play with but a sthey looked at one another Niewiadoma-Phinney powered off. Soon the gap was 20 seconds, then 45, then 1:15. She had ridden herself into the virtual yellow jersey and still, the others continued to look at each other.

"Honestly, I didn’t understand fully," Reusser said. "I think the problem was that Demi and me, we were marking each other too much. Really stupid for both of us."

“Demi kept attacking super hard, and I kept telling her, ‘Don’t do this. Let’s just ride.’ Because we had Kasia well in sight. We could for sure close it."

The constant marking and attacking did little more than increase the lactic acid in their legs, Reusser pointed out.

But Reusser had little choice but to follow Vollering’s accelerations. Letting the Dutchwoman ride away could have been just as damaging to her Tour ambitions. But every attack and counterattack also played into the hands of Niewiadoma, already alone up the road and able to ride her own pace.

"It was not too good from us and very good from Kasia," Reusser admitted.

"Neither of us wanted to ride crazy with the other in the wheel, knowing there are following attacks,” Reusser explained.

Movistar had gone into the stage expecting Vollering to be the principal threat. The team’s plan, according to Reusser’s sports director Kelvin Dekker, had been straightforward: keep their leader out of trouble for as long as possible, deliver her into the decisive section and then "follow, follow, follow," with particular attention paid to Vollering.

The difficulty came when Niewiadoma went instead.

"Then a game start[ed] where Demi attacks a few times more, and I think Marlen realised quite quickly that what Kasia was doing was quite strong. But she also couldn’t drop from Demi, so you have to follow those attacks. And that smoked her a bit," Dekker said.

Eventually, the tactical game turned into mere survival. The matches had been burned and all the while Niewiadoma-Phinney was growing her lead.

"All those tactical stories, you can throw them out of the window in the moment that someone else is just quite a bit stronger," Dekker said. "Then it’s just riding full gas to the finish and hoping you’re still close enough."

Dekker admitted Niewiadoma-Phinney winning both the physical and tactical battle had not been the scenario Movistar considered most likely, even if they had discussed the possibility of her attacking.

"I think for sure she’s underestimated," he said. "Kasia is an incredible rider. She’s been on every Tour podium. She’s won one."

But "if you would have asked me about this scenario, I would have said this was the less likely scenario to happen. But it did happen."

Niewiadoma-Phinney reached the summit solo with a comfortable margin. Vollering tried to minimise the damage at the end with one more attack on Reusser and finished in second place, 1:16 after Niewiadoma-Phinney.

When asked what had gone through her mind when Vollering attacked that final time, Reusser had a simple, explicit comment: "F*** it."

Reusser, completely spent, got passed by Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) and had to settle for fourth place on the stage, 1:42 down from Niewiadoma-Phinney.

For Reusser, the only consolation lay in knowing she had given it her all.

"I was really smoked," she said. "I am not so happy, but I gave everything."

But the race is far from over. There are two more stages left in the 2026 Tour de France avec Zwift and the current GC top three is as follows:

1. Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney in yellow
2. Demi Vollering +15 seconds
3. Marlen Reusser +39 seconds

Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney flew to stage seven victory and into the yellow jersey on Mont Ventoux and the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift on Friday, in an historic ride.

The Canyon-SRAM rider, winner of the race in 2024, attacked with 9.7km to go on the famous mountain, and gradually built up a huge lead as race leader Marlen Reusser (Movistar) and Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) looked at each other. The pair were unable, or unwilling, to close the gap, as Niewiadoma-Phinney pressed on.

Stage seven's winner was 1:17 behind Reusser heading into the stage, but ended the day ahead, with Vollering driving off the front in the final 500m to also take time on the yellow jersey. Niewiadoma-Phinney now leads the race, 15 seconds ahead of Vollering, with Reusser in third, a further 24 seconds behind. Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD) was third on the stage, ahead of Reusser.

Despite winning the race overall two years ago, this was Niewiadoma-Phinney's first Tour stage win, putting her in pole position with two more stages of the race to come.

Vollering could not leave behind Reusser until the closing stages, as Niewiadoma-Phinney flew away, not just holding onto her lead, but extending it on one of cycling's most famous climbs.

"Honestly, it’s hard to describe my feelings because I’m speechless," Niewiadoma-Phinney said post-stage. "I feel so much gratitude and I don’t know, this victory goes to so many people that were with me along this very long road, without proper big wins. I just want to thank you almost everyone. I don’t know, I’m just so tired and blown away with what happened.

"As we started to climb Mont Ventoux, I looked right and saw my parents, they made a surprise visit and I could see my Dad crying, and I thought I just needed to make them proud. This victory goes to my family, to my friends, to my team, to my husband Taylor, to my coach. Also my team boss Ronnie, because they know how much effort I put into this victory, and they were always by my side and listening to my complaints. I’m just blown away."

"I never really chased that victory for the sake of winning, I chased it for the sake of this beautiful feeling," she continued. "I came to Ventoux with my friends, with my husband, and we rode the climb three times. We had fun, and it was just about this amazing feeling of being around here, at the top of the mountain. From that moment, I just wanted to have that feeling of coming here, the pure joy of riding, feeling like a kid. We can go anywhere we want and love every pedal stroke.

"My big idea was to make it to Chalet [Reynard] with 6km to go on my own, because I knew with the wind we had today, if someone was chasing behind they would try to stay on the wheel as much as possible. Once I made it to Chalet, there was a lot of headwind, but I knew in the back they would just play the game."

How it happened

There was action before the race reached Mont Ventoux, with Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) gaining yet more points on the mountains classification, but in reality, nothing really mattered until Mont Ventoux.

The classified climb began with 15.7km to go, making the first 130km to go essentially a giant neutralised zone. Even this early on the climb, there were around just 20 riders left in the front of the race. Among those distanced early was Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike), as world champion Magdeleine Vallieres (EF Education-Oatly) and Célia Gery (FDJ United-Suez) forged off the front. The pair were soon caught, and Gery returned to setting the pace for Vollering. Just 13 riders were left in the group of favourites with 13.5km to go, with most of the leaders isolated within that.

Vollering first attacked with 10.7km to go, splintering the front of the race. She was followed by yellow jersey Reusser and Niewiadoma-Phinney, the top three on general classification together again.

Next to attack from this group, with 9.7km to go, was Niewiadoma-Phinney, which left Vollering and Reusser looking at each other. The gap grew to 20 seconds, then to over 40 seconds, with 7.3km to go. Behind, Vollering and Reusser continued to look at each other, while further down the road, the group containing Longo Borghini, her teammate Paula Blasi, Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM) and Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) closed in.

As Niewiadoma-Phinney forged on alone, Vollering finally managed to distance Reusser inside the final 500m, putting 30 seconds into her. However, it wasn’t enough to secure yellow, which went to Niewiadoma-Phinney.

Results

Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2026 stage seven: La Voulte-sur-Rhône > Mont Ventoux (146.8km)

1. Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, in 4:22:53
2. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, +1:16
3. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +1:42
4. Marlen Reusser (Sui) Movistar, +1:46
5. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD, +1:48
6. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM, +1:48
7. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, +2:01
8. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD, +3:26
9. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, +3:58
10. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek, +4:11

General classification after stage seven

1. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, in 24:07:34
2. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, +0:15
3. Marlen Reusser (Sui) Movistar, +0:39
4. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +2:59
5. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM, +3:21
6. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, +4:01
7. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD, +4:32
8. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD, +5:13
9. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek, +6:09
10. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, +6:17

The Tour de l'Avenir has twice foretold the future of Colombian cycling. In 1980, Alfonso Flórez's victory signalled the arrival of Latin American riders in Europe, paving the way for pioneers such as Luis Herrera and Fabio Parra to deliver Colombia's first successes in the Grand Tours. After that, though, there followed two decades of relative obscurity. Then, in 2010, Nairo Quintana won the same under-23 race and triggered a second Colombian boom in the World Tour. Alongside Quintana - nicknamed 'The Condor' - riders such as Rigoberto Urán, Esteban Chaves, Jarlinson Pantano, Darwin Atapuma and Sergio Luis Henao formed what became known as Colombia's "golden generation". Between them, they won the Giro d'Italia, the Vuelta a España, Il Lombardia, Paris-Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, the Tour de Romandie, Volta a Catalunya and the Tour de Suisse, collecting dozens of stage wins and podium finishes across the World Tour.

In 2017 Egan Bernal became Colombia's sixth winner of the Tour de l'Avenir, and two years later he made history by becoming the country's first winner of the Tour de France – aged just 22, making him, at that point, the youngest winner since 1909. Bernal went on to win the Giro d'Italia in 2021. Yet those triumphs also marked the beginning of a decline that now feels set in, especially now that Quintana, the defining rider of his generation, has announced he will retire at the end of this year. In 2026, Colombia has just 11 active riders in the World Tour, down from a peak of 22 in 2021 – and at the 2026 Tour de France none of them won a stage, let alone a classification jersey.

From a great height

From his home in Medellín, Luis Fernando Saldarriaga speaks with equal parts pride and melancholy when he reflects on that era. As head coach of Colombia es Pasión, the development project that gathered the nation's brightest prospects in the 2000s, he believes such success will not return any time soon. "Today there is no serious project focused on producing new riders," he says. "Domestic teams race only for Colombia, not for Europe. Coaches are not thinking about what modern cycling demands: tactics, strategy, nutrition, cognitive development. What's missing is a structure and a method capable of building a long-term process."

Back in the 1980s, when Colombian riders claimed their first Grand Tour stages, Saldarriaga would wake before dawn to follow radio broadcasts from Europe. He remembers the flaws that limited those pioneers: weak teamwork, time losses on flat stages, crashes on cobbles, poor positioning in crosswinds. "Herrera and Parra were brilliant climbers," he says, "but they had weaknesses."

Saldarriaga had become one of Colombia's leading coaches by the early 2000s, securing public and private backing for Colombia es Pasión. The programme was designed around sports science and talent identification. "We created a system for detecting, selecting and developing talent," he explains. "We used ergometry, VO2 testing, biomechanics, aerodynamics, psychology and nutrition. Everything was scientific."

British cycling writer Matt Rendell, author of Colombia es Pasión, believes the project achieved something equally important: protecting riders from doping. "The philosophy was to develop riders slowly and systematically," Rendell says. "They wanted to deliver cyclists to the World Tour who already understood positioning, racecraft and how to behave in the biggest races." Doping, however, has remained a persistent shadow over Colombian cycling. Every year, the country features on lists published by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

Lina Bonilla, one of the few women covering Colombian cycling, says she was shocked by how normalised the issue appeared when she entered the sport six years ago. "At local level, doping is barely pursued [by the authorities]," she says. "There's a pact of silence. Journalists who investigate it are threatened. There is intimidation and collusion to keep these stories hidden." According to Bonilla, many riders treat doping as routine. "Then they move to Europe and discover that the controls are exhaustive. There, those practices are impossible."

The aim was never immediate success. "The objective was transcendence," Saldarriaga says, hinting at a sense of mission driven by one of the nation's chief sporting passions. He spent endless hours driving behind promising young riders during training, identifying technical flaws and correcting them in real time. Beyond his own expectations, he also carried the hopes of an entire country, where cycling has long served as both a national obsession and a rare source of joy amid decades of violence and instability. The results eventually came. Nearly all the riders developed within the programme reached Europe and built long professional careers. Saldarriaga led Colombia es Pasión from 2006 until 2010, the year Quintana won the Tour de l'Avenir.

Stagnation sets in

As the sport evolved, Colombian results began to fade. The stars of the golden generation simply grew older, while younger rivals in Europe emerged better prepared for modern racing. Bernal was the last Colombian to stand on a Grand Tour podium, five years ago. Since then, no new wave has arrived. "The good news is the talent still exists," Saldarriaga says. "The bad news is there's no structure or school. There are only isolated initiatives. Sometimes riders reach Europe, but they lack maturity and process. They become depressed and come home because they were never properly formed." In his view, the Colombian Cycling Federation lacks a coherent development model covering every stage of progression, from youth participation to elite performance. "There is no strong technical department capable of recognising that the sport has changed and that our model must become more analytical," he says.

Funding has also evaporated. In the 1980s, both the Colombian state and major companies invested heavily in cycling, backing teams such as Café de Colombia, Pilas Varta and Postobón in the European peloton. Economic crises eventually ended that support. Today, Colombian coffee survives merely as a small logo among the sponsors of Netcompany Ineos.

Ernesto Lucena, Colombia's sports minister from 2018 to 2021 and an avid amateur cyclist himself, believes the current crisis stems largely from the absence of long-term public policy. "Sport in this country has always been political," he says. "We've had four sports ministers in four years. That makes sustained projects impossible. There is no unified policy. The ministry doesn't even support cycling teams anymore." The budget cuts are stark. Over the past two years alone, the ministry's funding has dropped from 1.3 trillion pesos (£260 million) to just 312 billion pesos (£62.5 million). There were two main reasons: the economy failed to grow at the pace the government had anticipated, while congress rejected a financing bill promoted by the executive branch. The result was a widening fiscal deficit, prompting the national government to introduce sweeping cuts across sectors such as culture, sport and recreation – not so different from the austerity cuts implemented from 2010-2020 in Britain.

There is also the issue of age and development. Modern cycling now rewards teenagers. Riders such as Paul Seixas are already competing internationally before turning 20, having spent years within Continental development structures. Colombia, by contrast, still struggles to expose its young riders to European racing early enough. Bonilla paints a bleak picture of the grassroots scene. "There is no structure in youth racing," she says. "A 15-year-old rider survives through family support and odd jobs, often without proper nutrition, equipment, technology or even a decent bike. Meanwhile, a teenager in France or Belgium already has a huge advantage."

Elsewhere in Latin America, however, progress is being made. Saldarriaga has worked in both Ecuador and Mexico, where he first met a teenage Isaac del Toro several years ago. "They are doing things properly," he says. "Their riders live in Europe year-round. That's why we see [Ecuadorians] Jhonatan Narváez, Richard Carapaz and others achieving results." His diagnosis for Colombia is bleak. "We were neither active nor creative enough to adapt our model. The process needed renewal, but it never came. Now we are in a hole, and it will last for a long time."

The European advantage

Modern cycling is unforgiving. Rendell notes that World Tour teams no longer function as finishing schools. "Riders are not going there to learn anymore," he says. "They are expected to contribute immediately. Colombia lacks the structures and staff needed to educate riders properly before they reach the top teams. The talent exists, but the formation does not."

Diego Pescador is one of those rare talents. Before even turning 20, he had already earned a contract with Movistar. Now based in Spain for most of the year, the 21-year-old Colombian has experienced first-hand the gulf separating European cycling from the scene back home. "The difference is enormous," says Pescador. "In Europe, speed records are being broken on all kinds of stages. There are new training methods, far more technology, and better nutrition – and that's the foundation of success." The gap extends beyond training alone. Equipment, too, is on another level: the kit, the bikes, the shoes. "Even the socks can make a difference that helps you win," he says. Yet for Pescador, the biggest contrast lies in the professionalism of the system itself. "In Europe, everything is more structured. Every part of the process is looked after, and there's much more investment. Colombian cycling needs more companies willing to support the sport, and more opportunities for riders to race in Europe. The future is here."

During Colombia's glory years, success created a virtuous cycle. Young riders saw Bernal, Quintana and Chaves as proof that cycling could offer social mobility and international opportunity. Now, the opposite may happen. Without visible role models, aspiring riders may turn elsewhere. The old mythology of the "escarabajo" or beetle – a nickname that grew out of Colombia's reputation for producing small but relentless climbers – brings to mind riders floating through Alpine ascents on lungs forged at altitude. But this is no longer proving enough to win modern races. Significantly, the most recent Latin American winner of the Tour de l'Avenir was not Colombian but Mexican: Isaac del Toro in 2023. The last Colombian victor was Bernal in 2017, nearly a decade ago. Since surviving his life-threatening training crash in 2022, Bernal has yet to show signs that he can return to Grand Tour-winning level. Nor does it appear likely that another Colombian will win the Tour de l'Avenir soon. Once again, the race that predicts the future seems to be offering a dispiriting diagnosis of Colombian cycling.

Lucena sees little hope of major institutional support returning soon. "The next government will simply try to survive with whatever budget remains," he says. Still, he retains faith in Colombian talent. Together with Quintana, he is now planning projects aimed at identifying and supporting young riders capable of competing in Europe. Somewhere high in the Andes, perhaps, the next great Colombian climber is already riding – waiting for the structural changes that might finally allow him to fly.

The rise and fall

Between 2014 and 2021, Colombian cyclists lit up the World Tour, claiming four Grand Tour titles and countless stages. Here are the crowning achievements of this high-flying generation:

2014: Nairo Quintana secures Colombia's first-ever overall victory at the Giro d'Italia.

2016: Quintana adds the Vuelta a España to his palmarès, while Esteban Chaves makes history by winning Il Lombardia.

2017: Sprint sensation Fernando Gaviria dominates the Giro d'Italia, taking an four stage wins.

2019: Egan Bernal, at just 22, becomes the first Colombian - and the first Latin American rider-to win the Tour de France overall classification.

2021: Bernal cements his Grand Tour legacy by taking the overall title at the Giro d'Italia.

2022-2026: Bernal's horrific 2022 training crash, coupled with extended absences, controversies and suspensions for veterans like Quintana and Miguel Ángel López, leaves a void at the top. Colombian talent remains in the World Tour, but the glory days have passed.

This feature was originally published in the 4 June 2026 print edition of Cycling Weekly magazine – available to buy on the newsstand every Thursday (UK only). Digital versions are available on Apple News and Readly. Subscriptions through Magazines Direct.

The landscape is unforgiving on Mont Ventoux. Lunar and barren, the road gives onto an open expanse, bending upwards to the transmitter tower at the summit, where the wind either whistles or howls.

It’s here, on these slopes, where the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will climb on its queen stage this Friday, on what is set to be a decisive day in the battle for the yellow jersey.

“It’s definitely a very iconic climb,” said Canyon-Sram’s Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney, the race’s winner in 2024, currently third overall. “I don’t believe anyone will be waiting until the final kilometres to make the action or the decisive move. I think, from watching the guys race, we can all expect a hard start and then survival to the top.”

Rising to almost 2,000m, Mont Ventoux – the ‘Giant of Provence’ – has until now only offered victory to men at the Tour; Eddy Merckx (1970) and Marco Pantani (2000) will spring to mind for long-term fans, while more recent stage winners include Chris Froome (2013), Wout van Aert (2021) and Valentin Paret-Peintre (2025).

Tour de France Femmes race director Marion Rousse chose to include the Ventoux in her race because she believes it’s the “most spectacular climb” in world cycling. She's ridden it five times herself, in fact, and said she hadn't even considered whether some might find it too hard.

“We don’t plan the race based on whether the women are able to climb it,” Rousse said ahead of the race. “For me, they’re able to climb anything.”

Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) was a teenager when she first rode to the summit of the Ventoux in 2016. At the time, the Dutchwoman was plotting a career in speed skating, and had travelled to the south of France for a camp with her team-mates.

“One of the trainers went every summer to Mont Ventoux with his bike,” Vollering explained, “and at one point he thought to bring his training group with him.

“It’s where it all started for me. It was the first ever climb I did. The feeling of riding a climb for the first time is quite special, especially because I knew back then already that I was quite good at it. I really enjoyed it, and I really hope I can enjoy it again on the stage itself.”

For Alice Towers, EF Education-Oatly’s former British champion, the prospect of Mont Ventoux is both exciting and intimidating. “I’ve done my research, watching past races and looking on VeloViewer, and I’m expecting the worst,” she said.

Though Towers has never ridden the Ventoux before, she has scaled the Alto de L’Angliru, the steep, Asturian mountain thought to be among the toughest in Europe, which closed this year's Vuelta Femenina. “It was insane. [Ventoux] can’t be worse than that,” she said.

“[Before the race] everyone was like, ‘It should be banned from cycling.’ And I was like, ‘Ah yeah, alright, let’s see.’ Then when I was going up the climb, I was doing about 20rpm. I’m not even exaggerating. I was in the gruppetto, and I was getting pushes from people.”

The gruppetto, the ‘small group’ of riders at the rear of the race, will anticipate a similarly challenging day on stage seven of the Tour. If the leaders break the climbing record, as Niewiadoma and Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) have pledged they will, then there could be a race for some riders to finish within the time limit, set at an extra 20% of the stage winner’s time.

“I’m just trying to get mentally prepared,” said Kiara Lylyk, a Canadian sprinter who rides for French ProTeam Mayenne Monbana My Pie. “It’s a pretty long day, and a lot of climbing – 3,500m or so – so we’ll see. I think you’ve just got to take it as it is in the stage and fight to the end.”

Alongside Lylyk, Liv AlUla Jayco’s Ruby Roseman-Gannon is also expecting to be trailing at the back. “It’s going to be an amazing stage to watch,” she said. “I wish I had a [TV] screen in the gruppetto.”

While only a handful of this edition's starters have actually raced up the climb – 12 of them took part in the short-lived Mont Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge in 2022 – some carried out their own recons in the weeks before the Tour.

One of them was Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal), for whom the Ventoux now holds a special place in her heart; this June, Ghekiere asked her girlfriend to marry her at the summit of the mountain. “I was planning to do a recon, and a lot of pieces fell together that day [to propose], so I thought, ‘Why not?’,” she said.

“One of the things my girlfriend always said to me was, ‘If you ask me on top of a mountain, [I’ll say yes]'... I think I’ll have a lot of good memories and emotions in the stage.”

On Friday afternoon, Ghekiere’s fiancée, as well as Lylyk’s parents, will be among the tens of thousands gathered on the mountain to see a history-making moment: the Tour de France Femmes’ first arrival on Mont Ventoux.

“It’s going to be brutal,” said Marlen Reusser (Movistar), the rider with the honour of wearing the yellow jersey on the day. Who will be leading the race by the end remains a mystery. But the occasion, and the suspense it has fostered, have already made it a stage to be savoured.

Mckenzie Sampson’s daughter was two or three when he was developing Harmonic Riff, his first kit for the Canyon-SRAM women’s WorldTour team.

She would sit on his lap while he worked and play with the colours. When the first fabric swatches arrived, she would wrap them around her shoulders like a cape and run through the house. Later, the team sent her an extra-extra-small jersey, which she wore while they watched the races together.

"That’s my team, that’s my team," she would say whenever Canyon-SRAM appeared on the screen.

For Sampson, the moment became a grounding point through the late nights and endless revisions.

"This is what I'm designing for," Sampson says. "Seeing that [jersey] on her and her excitement…it's so powerful to have."

To the viewer, a cycling kit flashing by at 50 kilometres an hour can register as little more than colour, logos and a quick means of identifying one team from another. To Sampson, an apparel designer who has spent 17 years designing kits, a good jersey should do far more.

It should tell a story.

At this year’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the Canyon-SRAM story is being told in white, pink, blue, orange and green. The team’s switch-out kit takes Sampson’s Luminous design—a graphic inspired by light refracting through coloured glass—and places it on a bright white base, with a “We Femmes” wordmark stretched across the chest, back and sleeves.

The design carries two stories at once.

The first is a decade of Canyon-SRAM, which entered the peloton in 2016 as a women’s programme in its own right rather than an extension of a men’s team. The second looks beyond the professional peloton. We Femmes is built around a global invitation: those who already ride should bring along a woman who does not. It's Canyon's promise to bring at least 1,000 women a year to free rides and events over the next decade.

On the jersey, with its bold colours and font, that phrase feels more like a statement: we, women, belong here.

Sampson is quick to point out that the Tour-specific wordmark isn't his design, but he does very much approve of its attitude.

"The wordmark wasn’t actually done by me, but I kind of dig it," he says. "It’s a little punk rock, and women’s cycling is a little punk rock, you know?"

A story, built in layers

The white switchout kit has had little trouble being seen. After six stages, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney sits third overall, 1:17 behind yellow jersey Marlen Reusser (Movistar). The 2024 champion is chasing a fifth consecutive podium and a second overall title.

Asked whether he is biased because he designed the kit she wears, Sampson laughed.

"I’m going to say yes, definitely," he says. "But I think it’s a mix of her as a rider, her as a person, and she’s an incredible style icon of cycling."

Long before a kit reaches a rider’s shoulders, however, it has to survive a much slower and less glamorous process: trend research, story concepts and discarded designs; technical fabrics and print tests; sponsor requirements and rider fittings; and the awkward geometry of turning a flat graphic into something that works both standing still and moving at race speed.

To that end, Sampson considers himself a product designer first. His primary experience is in performance clothing; the graphics often arrive near the end, “the last little bit” that turns a functioning garment into something people notice.

These days, riders at the highest level receive garments that were specifically tailored to them, rather than the more generic sizes available to consumers.

It is an easily overlooked but significant marker of just how far women’s cycling has professionalised. But for the designer, that creates another challenge: the artwork must remain coherent even as the cut and proportions change from one rider to another.

And the jersey is only one piece. Between racewear, helmets, accessories and off-the-bike clothing, Sampson says a complete collection can contain as many as 65 individual pieces.

The process starts with the team: its riders, their energy and the limits imposed by sponsors and brand colours.

"I've been really fortunate to be a part of some of the most interesting teams, I think, within Specialized and with Canyon," Sampson says. "The teams themselves have really been the key factors in allowing those designs to come forth. Canyon specifically has been an interesting point where [the design] just needs to be bright and bold and powerful and have a certain level of energy that the riders emit."

A cyclist himself, Sampson understands how a kit should fit and move. His inspiration, though, comes from far beyond road racing. He grew up around skateboarding, snowboarding and wakeboarding, then designed kits for his University of Oregon team before landing roles at Adidas and Specialized. His later work includes Boels-Dolmans, Pete Stetina, Canyon's off-road programmes and Canyon-SRAM.

His inspirations might come from fashion forecasting, skate and snowboard graphics as well as the world around him. He gathers textures, colour treatments and visual elements, then begins building in layers: gradients, graphic elements, branding and the story intended to hold it all together.

A team might settle on a concept in three or four attempts, or run through 10, 20 or even 100. Sampson filters them to two or three options, presented from "mild to wild."

Luminous began with coloured light refracting through the stained glass of a Gaudí cathedral in Spain. Harmonic Riff began with music, translating sound, rhythm and vibration into undulating gradients.

"I like to build a story around the design,” Sampson says, giving it “a little more meaning and a little more depth than just being cool for cool’s sake. The more depth and story and meaning you can put behind your design, the better."

The white Tour kit was a hit from the start. It was designed first and impressed when the initial swatches were printed, but the darker blue-purple version felt like a stronger option for year-round.

"There was something unique about the darker blue kit that just felt interesting and powerful and like a really strong starting point," Sampson says.

White was saved for the Tour, where its lighter base also serves a practical purpose in the summer heat.

"Keeping the riders cool is always a huge factor," Sampson says. "It’s not just the meshes, but also the colours included."

Canyon-SRAM’s kits have historically been a fan favourite, and Sampson says he loves seeing the kits out in the wild. But he also knows they can be divisive.

“Graphics in general are polarising,” he said. “Whether you love them or hate them, they’re always going to be polarising.”

The final result is never the designer’s decision alone. Teams, sponsors, manufacturers, materials and performance requirements all have an impact. As Sampson put it, laughing: "If the design sucks, it’s probably not always the designer’s fault."

“Today we have to make it quick because I have to go and recover for tomorrow,” Marlen Reusser begins her press conference after stage six of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Dressed in the yellow jersey, she’s just ridden 150km and climbed 2,500m through the hills of the Ardèche, all in 33°C heat, but already Friday’s queen stage is on her mind. It’s the day that will likely decide this Tour. More specifically, it's the climb that will likely decide this Tour: Mont Ventoux.

On stage seven, the peloton of the Tour de France Femmes will wade into unchartered waters on the Giant of Provence. Only a handful of the riders have ever raced up the mountain – the 12 that did the short-lived Mont Ventoux Dénivelé Challenge race in 2022 – and only the GC hopefuls have been to recon its slopes. One of them was Reusser, who went a few weeks before the race.

“It was very windy that day and it was impressive,” she said on Wednesday. “I did the downhill, I had quite deep rims, and I was almost crying, so afraid, because there were gusts.

“The uphill is going to be, of course, I expect, super hard. But I think if I could choose a hard day, I would choose more Ventoux than today [stage five] normally.”

That last sentence might surprise some people. As a rider often typecast as a time triallist – to be fair, half of her career victories, including her world title and four European titles, have come against the clock – Reusser isn’t someone fans often associate with long climbs. She’s never won a mountain stage at a Grand Tour, and has tended to lose time to her rivals when the altitude nears 2,000m.

Still, there’s a feeling that the Ventoux might suit her. One colleague in the press pack has dubbed the ascent a “Reusser climb”, for its steady slopes, and lack of prolonged steepness. Reusser, it seems, agrees.

“Actually, I like it,” she said. “I mean, it suits me more than the kind of climbs that we’ve done so far, but it’s going to be brutal, 100%.”

The question now is: does it suit her enough to hold off Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram), the riders who currently make up the podium? Reusser leads by just 12 seconds going into the stage. Would she have liked to have more of a buffer? “If you could have 10 minutes and win the Tour like this, why not?” she laughs.

“No, I’m joking. I think it makes it spicy. It makes it interesting, not only for you and for the public, but also for us. We’re going to see tomorrow.”

It was with hopefulness, perhaps, that one reporter asked Reusser what her strategy was for the climb. “I don’t know,” she replied, and laughed: “If I already had a plan, it would not be smart to say it here, no? But I really don’t know.

“I focus on every day. I knew tomorrow was Mont Ventoux, but now I’ll go recover. Tomorrow I’ll take care of Mont Ventoux. I have a smart sports director, Kelvin Dekker, I’m sure he has some ideas.”

It turns out Dekker has one clear idea in mind. Speaking to Cyclingnews earlier on Thursday, he was bullish about Reusser’s chances: “We're going to try to win the stage, that's the main thing,” he said.

“[Reusser] is going to try and follow Demi, and then we're going to try and beat her. Because I think if we want to win the Tour, we want to beat her on the Ventoux."

Such fighting talk risks heaping pressure on a rider. But Reusser seems unfazed by the challenge. Wearing yellow, she said, “hasn’t changed me anyhow”. With three stages remaining, and edging closer to a career-defining victory, how does she manage to stay so calm? “I am asking myself the same question,” she said.

“Sometimes I have the feeling people, and also my competitors, take cycling very seriously, like very, very, very seriously. And I think, like everything in life, it’s just something. It’s just a fun thing to do, and we should enjoy it. It’s just a bike race. I’m maybe not that crazy about these things as others.”

Still, she’d like to win the Tour de France. She’d really like to win the Tour de France.

As Reusser got up to leave her press conference, she thanked the assembled press and, microphones still rolling, said cheerfully: “Hopefully see you tomorrow.” Her next point of call was to recover. Friday will be a big day.

Kim Le Court-Pienaar recovered from a late mechanical set-back to win a thrilling sprint finish in Tournon-sur-Rhône on day six of the Tour de France Femmes.

After being forced to swap bikes on the penultimate descent of the day, the AG Insurance-Soudal rider bridged the gap to join an eight-rider breakaway, and in the final few metres got her wheel in front, pushing Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) and Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) into second and third place respectively.

After a hot and hilly day in the Ardèche, on a long route that featured six categorised climbs, Marlen Reusser of Movistar remains in the yellow jersey, as Mont Ventoux looms on the horizon of tomorrow's race-defining stage. But for now, the dust is still settling on a fast and frenetic day of racing.

"The race was crazy,' said Le Court-Pienaar immediately afterwards. "I had a mechanical on the downhill before the last climb. I had to change bikes and I was really far, but my team were amazing, they brought me back, slowly but surely back to the bunch. I got back on top of the last climb, which was a really big effort, and I just tried to stay patient, tried to recover.

"Riejanne Markus and I bridged to the breakaway. We got to the front and they were not cooperating, which was obvious, but I was happy to still try. I got a gap in the last few kilometres and Elisa closed me down. When Riejanne Markus made an attack from the back, I knew it was going to happen, because that's the only way she can win a race like this.

"I had to close the gap myself, and I was really, really dead. I was on the limit. I can't believe I still had the legs to sprint, it was really close whether I could give up. I will never give up after this big effort my team did.

"I think the team needed this. I have been really struggling since the TT day and I think this really makes up... Of course we've got GC ambitions, but winning a stage at the Tour de France is very special. People don't really remember top 10, top five, but they do remember stage winners."

Polkadot-wearing Puck Pieterse hoovered up more climbing points today, including the maximum haul for the QOM Sprint to the top of category-two Col de Lalouvesc. And then, with 45km to go, after hanging on the wheels of her FDJ United-SUEZ teammate Demi Vollering, local rider Célia Gery went on the attack during the long fast decent.

Five riders went with the Frenchwoman, as she led the way around roads that are very familiar to her. Along with Pieterse and Gery were Sarah Van Dam (Team Visma-Lease a Bike), Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD), Liane Lippert (Movistar) and Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly).

Behind them, a depleted peloton stayed within reach, with the gap just 25 seconds as the race approached the last climb, the category-3 Côte de Boucieu-le-Roi (3.9km à 5.6%), which Puck Pieterse was once again the first to summit.

The maillot jaune of Marlen Reusser was in the chasing group, along with Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM) in the white jersey, plus Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Team Visma-Lease a Bike), Demi Vollering and Paula Blasi (UAE Team L'IMAD), as well as impressive 19-year-old Paula Ostiz (Movistar).

Several big-name riders were struggling with the pace and heat of the day, including Anna van der Breggen from Team SD Worx-Protime, who was dropped. However, after recovering impressively from her enforced bike swap, Kim Le Court-Pienaar rose to the challenge and bridged the gap, along with Riejanne Markus from Lidl-Trek, both joining the breakaway with 10km to go.

Vollering was pulling hard in what remained of the peloton, shrinking the gap and stretching the group during the last technical descent, but it became clear the stage winner was going to come from the ranks of the breakaway.

The lead swapped hands several times in the last 5km, with Kim Le Court-Pienaar first making a move with just over 4km to go, followed by Cédrine Kerbaol and then Riejanne Markus, but Elisa Longo Borghini reigned in each attack.

As the stage went right down to the wire, Pieterse made a late dash for the line, but having made up so much lost ground, a determined Le Court-Pienaar flew past her and won a memorable day of racing by half a bike length.

RESULTS

TOUR DE FRANCE FEMMES Stage 6, Montbrison > Tournon-sur-Rhône (153.4km)

1. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, in 4:01:48
2. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly
3. Puck Pieterse (Ned) Fenix-Premier Tech
4. Sarah Van Dam (Can) Visma-Lease a Bike
5. Célia Gery (Fra) FDJ United-Suez
6. Liane Lippert (Ger) Movistar, all at same time
7. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +2s
8. Riejanne Markus (Ned) Lidl-Trek, +5s
9. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD, +28s
10. Noemi Rüegg (Sui) EF Education-Oatly, at same time

Tour de France Femmes 2026: general classification after stage 6

1. Marlen Reusser (Sui) Movistar in 19:43:34
2. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez + 0:12
3. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM + 1:17
4. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'Imad + 2:28
5. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM + 2:40
6. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD + 2:54
7. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek + 3:05
8. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly + 3:07
9. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, +3:26
10. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'Imad + 3:51

Isaac del Toro has committed to riding for UAE Team Emirates-XRG for the next five years, signing what’s believed to be one of the biggest deals in bike racing.

The 22-year-old had previously agreed to stay with his current team until 2029, but after the Mexican’s mature performances this season, UAE Team Emirates-XRG moved swiftly to agree terms and lock the prodigiously talented rider in for a further two years.

Already this year, Del Toro has tasted victory at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes and enjoyed a brilliant run at the Tour de France, where he stood on the podium having finished third in GC, won a stage and took home the white jersey awarded to the best young rider. These performances backed up his stunning achievements in the 2025 Giro d’Italia, where he won stages, wore pink and finished as runner-up.

The agreement means Del Toro has a deal that extends beyond that of his teammate and mentor Tadej Pogačar, whose current contract will see him stay with the most dominant WorldTour squad on the circuit until 2030.

It also locks him in for longer period of time than UAE Team Emirates-XRG’s two other young talents, Pablo Torres (20) and Jan Christen (22), who have both committed to the team until 2030. Whether it's enough to quell speculation about UAE's rumoured interest in Decathlon CMA CGM's 19-year-old rider Paul Seixas remains to be seen.

Although he won’t be taking part in the upcoming Vuelta a España, Del Toro has shone this season as he settled comfortably into his role as Pogačar’s lieutenant and wingman, with the Slovenian champion consistently showering his potential heir apparent with support and praise.

"This team feels like home," Del Toro wrote on the UAE Team Emirates-XRG website. "We share the same ambition, the same passion for racing and the same desire to keep getting better. Signing long-term gives me a lot of confidence because I know I’m in the right place for my future.

"We’ve already achieved some amazing victories together, but I honestly believe the best is still to come. I’m excited to keep growing with this team and fighting for the biggest races in the world."

"I’m very happy to continue this journey with UAE Team Emirates-XRG. From the moment I joined the team, everybody has believed in me and given me the best environment to develop as both a rider and a person.

"Every season I’ve learned something new from my teammates and the people working around me, and I feel that I’m improving all the time."

The first time Puck Pieterse climbed Mont Ventoux, she was just 10 years old, riding a mountain bike up one of cycling's most iconic climbs.

Ahead of Friday's summit finish the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the Dutch rider looked back on that childhood ride and set herself a target.

"I rode it up when I was 10, I think, on my mountain bike," Pieterse told Australia's SBS after Stage 5. "I looked it back. My time was one hour and 58 minutes, so I hope to break that."

Fourteen years later, Pieterse returns to the Giant of Provence under very different circumstances. By the time she reaches the foot of Mont Ventoux on Friday, the peloton will already have covered almost 884 kilometres of racing across seven stages.

In Bédoin, the 24-year-old hopes to arrive wearing the coveted polka-dot jersey, which, for the first time this week, she has openly admitted she is targeting.

Earlier this week, Pieterse was quick to play down suggestions she was chasing the mountains classification, insisting that Fenix-Premier Tech's priority was stage wins and that "the polka-dot jersey is secondary."

Friday's Queen Stage marks the first-ever Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift summit finish on Mont Ventoux, with the peloton tackling the mountain via its southern approach.

British hill-climbing specialist Illi Gardner currently holds the QOM on Strava's verified Bédoin segment with a time of 1:09:29, set during a dedicated record attempt in 2025. The Tour riders, however, will have tougher day out. Before reaching the foot of Ventoux, they must first tackle the Col de la Grande Limite, Col du Colombier and Col de Suzette, arriving in Bédoin with more than 127 kilometres already in their legs.

Once there, the road climbs relentlessly for 15.7 kilometres at an average gradient of 8.8% to the 1,910-metre summit. After the sheltered opening slopes through the forest, the road emerges above Chalet Reynard onto Ventoux's barren and windswept top.

The mountain is likely to shape both the general classification and the Queen of the Mountains competition.

After claiming an expected victory in Stage 4's individual time trial, world time trial champion Marlen Reusser (Movistar) arrived at Stage 5 in yellow to face the first real climbing test of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. While Demi Vollering (FDJ-Suez) eventually won the three-up battle at the line, Reusser left Belleville-en-Beaujolais not just still in yellow, but looking like a genuine contender to wear it all the way to Nice.

On a stage where former Tour winners Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) repeatedly attacked one another, Reusser never looked rattled.

Instead, the Swiss rider raced with patience.

While her two biggest rivals traded accelerations in an attempt to drop the other, Reusser measured her efforts, went with the decisive moves and, in a move that could prove invaluable later in the week, even sprinted for bonus seconds at the final Queen of the Mountain. It was clever racing in a Tour that in 2024 came down to a measly four seconds between Vollering and Niewiadoma-Phinney.

By the finish in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, Reusser had not only matched the race's two most recent champions on the climbs but extended her overall lead, ending the day 12 seconds ahead of Vollering in the General Classification and 1:17 ahead of Niewiadoma-Phinney.

“I'm happy. I hoped for this,” Reusser said in the post-race press conference. “I really felt good the last days, and I also was thinking that this is possible, but always, you don't know before really.”

If there was one blemish on an otherwise near-perfect day, it came in the final few hundred metres. In the finishing straight, Niewiadoma jumped early. Vollering and Reusser initially looked at one another, baiting the other to go. It was Vollering who closed the gap to Niewiadoma-Phinney, putting Reusser in an advantageous position.

"Kasia went, then Demi went behind her, and I was like, 'Yeah, that's perfect'," Reusser said.

But as the three riders came back together before the sprint, Reusser briefly touched her brakes, losing the momentum she needed to contest the stage win.

"My momentum was gone. I was asleep. I don't know what I did," she lamented. "I'm really annoyed with myself. This is a bit sad. It's a tour stage win. I don't say that I would have won, but I just did the opposite of winning."

Still, Reusser was quick to put her disappointment into perspective.

"I should be, and I am, super happy about the day and that I'm in yellow still."

Any frustrations aside, Reusser praised both of her rivals.

"I think Demi was brave. She kept trying. You need courage to do that."

Of Niewiadoma-Phinney's attack, she added: "She really took it in the hands. I think she had a good shot there."

Vollering, who was teammates with Reusser at SD Worx for three seasons between 2021 and 2023, returned the respect.

Asked whether the Movistar rider could go on to win the Tour de France Femmes, the Dutchwoman answered without hesitation: "Yeah, for sure. For her it looks very bright now."

But Vollering pointed out that both she and Niewiadoma-Phinney have already won the Tour, while Reusser is still chasing the biggest victory of her career.

"Marlen is the one who never managed to win a Tour yet, so she has to work for it as well."

But she also acknowledged just how formidable her former teammate is.

"I'm sure it will be a hard battle because she's not a rider who you can beat easily because she's very strong,” Vollering said.”But, of course, I will try everything to do that."

Can Reusser hang in the Alps?

Stage 5 answered one of the biggest questions surrounding Reusser's Tour ambitions: could the world time trial champion climb with recent Tour winners Vollering, Niewiadoma-Phinney and Ferrand-Prévot?

On Wednesday's undulating stage, the answer was a definite yes.

Ferrand-Prévot, however, may have seen her GC ambitions all but disappear. The Visma-Lease a Bike rider was dropped on the day's final climb and conceded 2:35 to the leading trio, leaving her almost five minutes behind Reusser in the general classification.

Reusser was reluctant to rule the Frenchwoman out completely, but admitted the gap would be difficult to claw back.

"Five minutes is... I mean, you never say never, but to get five minutes back is hard," she said. "I wouldn't wish for me to have to go for five minutes now somewhere."

That "somewhere" will come quickly.

Thursday's hilly Stage 6 offers little respite before the race reaches its biggest test: Friday's summit finish atop the legendary Mont Ventoux.

Reusser shared that she visited Ventoux ahead of the Tour, and it was the descent, not the climb, that left the biggest impression.

"I was almost crying, so afraid I was, because there were gusts," she said.

Despite that, Reusser believes the mountain itself may actually suit her better than Stage 5's relentless succession of shorter climbs.

"If I could choose a hard day, I would choose more the Ventoux than today,” she stated.

Still, the Swiss rider remains characteristically measured.

She insisted Wednesday's performance hadn't suddenly made her more confident. Instead, she sees every mountain stage as another unknown, where even the strongest riders can have an unexpectedly good, or unexpectedly bad, day.

"You go into a race and you don't know yourself how you're going to feel that day," she said. "You have the same questions yourself."

If stage four’s time trial wasn’t the death knell of Pauline Ferrand-Prévot’s Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift bid, then Wednesday's fifth stage to Belleville-en-Beaujolais almost certainly was.

Dropped on the penultimate climb with around 30km to go, the defending champion ended up shipping more than two and a half minutes to her GC rivals – Marlen Reusser (Movistar), Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram), and the stage winner Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez). The damage, compounded by the 2:13 she lost in the time trial, means she now sits exactly five minutes adrift of Reusser in the yellow jersey. It’s a mountain even she will find hard to climb.

The first question Ferrand-Prévot faced back at her Visma-Lease a Bike team bus was the obvious one: Is the GC now over for her? “I have to be honest, yes,” she said. “I mean, I haven't seen the gaps yet, but yeah, I think it’s over. Now we have to refocus, change the plan maybe. We have to make a new plan.”

It was testament to Ferrand-Prévot’s professionalism that, on the day she likely lost the Tour, she held herself with grace and composure. “I did my best,” she smiled to each of her team-mates as they came to console her after the stage. In between hugs, she took off her gloves and handed them to a little boy in a PSG football kit.

“Pauline, tu es la meilleure,” one fan shouted – Pauline, you’re the best. She then took the time to give autographs to anyone who asked for one, even stopping to compose a selfie with a family to make sure all three of the children were in the frame.

“I can’t say I’m sad or disappointed, because I didn’t feel bad today,” she said. “To be honest, I felt quite good.”

It was on the steep Col de Durbize, the category-two kicker where Vollering attacked, that Ferrand-Prévot fell out of contention. “Until the climb, I felt good,” she said. “And on the climb, I was still feeling good, but I was just not strong enough to follow. They were just stronger today.”

A loud gasp filled the press room when the TV screens showed the moment Ferrand-Prévot was dropped. Journalists halted their typing and watched as the gap quickly ballooned. Within 4km, it was 40 seconds. Even with the help of her Visma team-mate Sarah Van Dam, Ferrand-Prévot couldn't close the distance to the front trio, and the time continued to grow. It looked like it might tip over three minutes at one point.

“I didn’t really look at the gap,” Ferrand-Prévot said. “I just said, ‘Ok, I’ll just fight until the end and we will see.’ There’s nothing I can do more than pushing on the pedals as much as possible.”

The number that mattered in the end was five minutes – the gap to the yellow jersey.

“Five minutes is... oof,” Reusser, the race leader, said in her press conference. “I mean, you never say never, but to get five minutes back is hard. I wouldn’t wish for me to have to go for five minutes now.”

Ferrand-Prévot’s sports director Rutger Tijssen was more optimistic. “I think anything can happen,” he said. “We know in high performance sports that the dice can tumble, which can happen in two or three days. In short, it’s difficult, but I won’t say that it’s directly over.”

Ferrand-Prévot, the runaway winner by almost four minutes last year, now sits 17th overall, with four stages remaining. Her team-mate Femke de Vries is eighth, 3:11 behind Reusser.

“Maybe now I will have the chance to go for a stage win,” Ferrand-Prévot said. “We have to discuss with the team, but if I cannot help Femke to have the best result possible, I will do it.”

Many expected we would see the defending champion on the attack on Mont Ventoux on Friday. That scene may still happen yet, but the circumstances have now changed. Barring a miraculous comeback, Ferrand-Prévot will not win this Tour de France Femmes.

“Because I won last year, now I say, ‘Ok, it will not change my life to win it again',” she had said ahead of the race. On Wednesday in Belleville-en-Beaujolais, she already seemed at peace with that prospect.

Demi Vollering stormed to victory on an electric stage 5 of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in Belleville-en-Beaujolais on Wednesday.

The FDJ United-Suez rider won from an elite group of three, pipping yellow jersey Marlen Reusser (Movistar) and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) on the line. The trio now look set to contest for overall victory at the race, after they put time into all their other general classification rivals. Reusser still leads the race, but her gap to Vollering has shortened to just 12 seconds, with four stages to come.

The trio escaped from the rest of the favourites on the final two climbs of the day, the Col de Durbize and Mont Bruilly, with the latter proving especially decisive in deciding the direction of the stage win, and probably the outcome of the whole race.

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) once again lost time, well over two minutes, which might mean her defence of the yellow jersey is now over. She was distanced on the Durbize, along with Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime), as FDJ put the pressure on.

On Mont Bruilly, Vollering repeatedly tried to escape, but every move was matched by Reusser, who took yellow on stage four's time trial; Niewiadoma then put in a dig, but the elastic did not snap. However, those three were then alone, and worked hard to ensure the maximum time possible was put into their rivals.

In the finale, Reusser led the three in, and Niewiadoma launched a surprise early sprint, aimed at catching her rivals out. Vollering, however, had the power to close the gap just in time for the line, with Reusser following in in second.

"Today, it was a really cool race," Vollering said on TV post-race. "The whole team, every single rider of the team, was part of it, and I enjoy those victories the most, when everybody puts their hard work into it, it's all the more special and beautiful, because you do it all together. The way how I managed to win the sprint, I thought I wasn't going to make it anymore and I somehow made it. It was a relief after the finish line.

"I knew Kasia would go early, because she always does, and I knew Marlen would gamble, so I let her gamble a bit. To try and make her work. She didn't, and I was like OK, if I don't do anything, Kasia is going to win. I just have to try, and maybe Marlen will come over me but at least I tried. I just gave it my everything until the line, it was a very long sprint, and I needed every single metre on the finish straight. I managed to do it, so I'm very happy about it.

"For her [Reusser], it looks very bright now. The only good thing is that I won the Tour already, Kasia as well, Marlen is the one who never managed to win it yet, so she'll have to work for it. I'm sure it will be a hard battle, because she is not a rider who you can beat easily because she is very strong. I will try everything to do that."

How it happened

The opening 40km of the stage were marked by endless attacks at the front of the peloton over the first three categorised climbs of the day, led by the second-category Côte de Cenves. However, no break stuck until Carlotta Cipressi (Human Powered Health) headed up the road with 105km to go.

Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Premier Tech) took the maximum points on the first three climbs of the day to extend her lead in the the Queen of the Mountains competition, while Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime) took second in the intermediate sprint behind Cipressi to extend her lead in the points classification.

Cipressi was caught with 99km to go, which brought the race together again, and started the fight for the escape once again. Pieterse once again won the sprint to the top of the third-category Col de Fontmartin, 54.1km into the stage.

With 79km to go of the day, on the run-in to the Col de Gerbet, a group of around 20 riders broke away from the peloton, but things were not yet settled behind, partly due to the presence of Antonia Niedermaier (Canyon-SRAM), who was ninth overall before the day, 1:43 behind race leader Reusser. The group built up a lead of 40 seconds, and included Femke de Vries (Visma-Lease a Bike), Franzi Koch (FDJ United-Suez), Lianne Lippert (Movistar), Niamh Fisher-Black (Lidl-Trek), Dominika Włodarczyk (UAE Team L’IMAD) and Pieterse.

The latter took the maximum points again over the top of the Gerbet, as the FDJ United-Suez-led peloton was 1:38 behind. Pieterse repeated her point-winning feat on the Côte de Pruzilly, too.

As the race approached the final hour, with 48km to go, the 19-woman break had 1:50 on the chasing group of favourites.

On the Col de Durbize, with 31km to go, the break started to splinter, with the gap starting to come down to the GC favourites behind. Włodarczyk was among the first to push on, followed by Lippert, Vallieres, Niedermaier and De Vries.

Behind, a huge leadout by Célia Gery (FDJ United-Suez) for her team leader Demi Vollering saw defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) put into trouble, as Vollering continued to surge. The gap to the front of the race was just 40 seconds over the top of the Durbize. Ferrand-Prévot was almost a minute behind Reusser heading into the final 23km.

The break was caught by the chase including Reusser and Vollering with just under 23km to go. At the bonus sprint, Reusser surged off the front to take six bonus seconds, two more than Vollering, extending her lead overall briefly.

Atop the final climb of the day, Mont Brouilly, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), Vollering and Reusser put distance into the rest of the race, with Vollering unable to crack her rivals on the descent to Belleville-en-Beaujolais. The race was then destined for a sprint.

Results

Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2026 stage five: Mâcon > Belleville-en-Beaujolais (140km)

1. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez in 3:53:54
2. Marlen Reusser (Swi) Movistar
3. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM
4. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pół) UAE Team L'IMAD + 0.45
5. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek
6. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM
7. Nienke Vinke (Ned) SD Worx - Protime + 1:12
8. Femke de Vries (Ned) Visma-Lease a Bike
9. Thalita de Jong (Ned) Human Powered Health
10. Niamh Fisher-Black (NZ) Lidl-Trek

General classification after stage 5

1. Marlen Reusser (Sui) Movistar, in 15:41:18
2. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, +12s
3. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, +1:17
4. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM, +2:40
5. Dominika Włodarczyk (Pol) UAE Team L'IMAD, +2:54
6. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +2:58
7. Isabella Holmgren (Can) Lidl-Trek, +3:05
8. Femke de Vries (Ned) Visma-Lease a Bike, +3:11
9. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, +3:41
10. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD, +3:51

Oscar Onley sprinted to victory from a small group on stage two of the Vuelta a Burgos on Wednesday, taking his first win for Netcompany-Ineos in the process.

The 23-year-old sprung from number of favourites atop the Valle de Sol climb, with Giulio Ciccone (Lidl-Trek) finishing in second, ahead of Enric Mas (Movistar). It means Onley is now in the leader's jersey, with three stages to come of the ProTour race, just ahead of fellow Briton Bjorn Koerdt (Picnic PostNL).

Onley, who joined Ineos at the beginning of the year, has had a disrupted season due to illness and injury. A crash at the Tour Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes in June led to his absence from the Tour de France, where he finished fourth overall in 2025. He finished second on a stage of the Volta ao Algarve in February, but has had to wait until now to step on to the top step of the podium. It is just his third career victory.

"I'm really happy," Onley said post-stage. :This hasn't been a good season for me so far; I've had a lot of setbacks and just not really got going, so I really wanted to come here, and the goal wasn't even to win, it was just to get some racing in the legs, to be honest."

"It was nice to be able to pay back the team, because they've fully supported me this whole year. Obviously being a new rider in the team, I wanted to show that I belonged here so it's quite a big relief.

"I guess today I showed that I have good legs, so we'll look at where I am on GC – I lost a bit of time yesterday but so did a lot of other GC guys – there's still a lot of racing to come."

The Scot's success is the second British triumph in two days at the Vuelta a España warmup race, after Matthew Brennan (Visma-Lease a Bike) won on stage one in Burgos, victorious from a reduced bunch sprint.

"Happy, but also quite relieved. I think there's been a lot of hard work, and especially today, the team really showed they believed in me so that was really good to see and I'm really happy it paid off," Brennan said on Tuesday.

Flag-to-flag TV coverage of every stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift is currently under consideration, race director Marion Rousse told Cycling Weekly.

This year, only three of the nine stages have been granted full broadcasts – stages one, five and nine – with hours missing from the the starts of the remaining six stages.

Speaking to Cycling Weekly at the start of stage five in Mâcon, race director Rousse said she and the race organiser, ASO, were giving “serious consideration” to broadcasting the race in full.

“What’s certain is that I’ve discussed this at length with France Télévisions [who produce the broadcast for the race, commissioned by ASO], and we’re giving serious consideration to broadcasting all the stages in full in the future because the women deserve it, and because it works well in terms of audience figures,” Rousse said.

“We’re currently giving it real consideration, which is a step forward. Things are moving in the right direction.”

Fans, riders and team staff were left frustrated on stage three when the partial broadcast missed Sigrid Haugset’s (Uno-X Mobility) stage-winning move, which came with 88km to go, 5km before the coverage began. “The best way to get more public is to show it properly,” Paula Blasi (UAE Team L’IMAD) told Cycling Weekly. “It’s quite sad that we cannot really watch it.”

Rousse said she is “actually quite pleased” to see the debates around TV coverage.

“In the very first edition [in 2022], the question was whether the Tour de France Femmes would work or not. And now, five years on, everyone wants to watch the stages in full,” she said.

“I receive a huge number of messages from cycling enthusiasts who want to watch the stages in full. With the men’s Tour, [full live coverage] has only been around for a short time, and there were years and years without fully broadcast stages.

“We needed to get settled in [as a race] and we didn’t want to rush things, either.”

Asked if financial constraints played a role in the decision to produce partial stage broadcasts, Rousse said: “Of course. Everything’s a question of resources, like the production of the footage. [Full coverage] is a consideration we hadn’t necessarily had in previous years, and one we’re now asking ourselves.

“There’s a real discussion to be had. The stars, middles and ends of stages are spectacular to watch. Let’s hope we can pull it off.”

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot suffered a major setback to her Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift title defence yesterday in a time trial that saw her lose over two minutes to Marlen Reusser, and the difference between the two riders could not have been starker. Whereas Reusser had a position on the bike that looked sleek with every component of the bike, her kit, and helmet dialled in to produce a bullet-like shape, Ferrand-Prévot looked a very different rider altogether.

The most prevalent aspect of her setup that just didn’t look right was the large Giro Aerohead II helmet that she was wearing. It was wider than her shoulders, and her position on the bike meant that it stuck out above her back when looking at her from the camera motorbike behind’s view.

In my experience as an Aerodynamics Consultant at Venturi Dynamics, I would confidently say that this was almost certainly not the optimal helmet shape for Ferrand-Prévot's preferred position on the bike.

The French rider, who finished 34th on the day, hadn't raced a time trial in over five years. Asked ahead of the race if she felt she was starting from zero in her time trial preparation, she laughed that it was more “minus 10 – [but] I did my homework quite well”. A rider we expect to fly when the race hits the mountains, Visma-Lease a Bike's GC contender has to adapt her TT position around two major surgeries she had to treat iliac artery endofibrosis, admitting herself, “it wasn’t the prettiest sight, it wasn’t the fastest for everyone else in the peloton, but it was the fastest for me.”

The Giro Aerohead II has proved phenomenally fast on plenty of riders. So, why might one of the best time trial helmets work for one rider, but not for another?

Over the last few years in professional cycling, aero optimisation has taken centre stage. With the head and shoulders of a rider pivotal to drag reduction, most obvious in this aero pursuit is the influx of different helmet designs, especially in the time trial market.

The POC Tempor may have started the trend back in 2012 at the Olympics, but it really took hold once Giro updated the Giro Aerohead II with its huge, bulbous, elongated design. But there is an interesting dilemma with these helmets: their performance can be very position-dependent. This even occurs within the aero road helmet market, but not quite to the same extent.

An interesting side note is that both the Lidl-Trek men and women’s teams, and FDJ men’s team, allow riders to use whatever time trial helmet they want. This is because helmets can be very individual to the rider in how they perform. I heard from one WorldTour rider that when a new TT helmet was released, they had to continue using the old one because the new one performed far worse for them, specifically.

But how can we account for this, and how can we ensure we get the right helmet for us?

How these new TT helmets work

A prevalent theme with recently released TT helmets is the huge flared designs on both sides of the helmets, and, in conjunction with that, the large flared visors. The Giro Aerohead II, the latest unreleased POC TT helmet used by EF Education-EasyPost and Oatley teams, Rudy Project Wingdream, Abus TimeShifter, and Ekoi Pure Aero, for example, all have a large flared-out design.

The predominant reason for this is that the optimal time trial position situates the head lower down, often slightly below the line of the back. In this position, the shoulders are a large barrier to the oncoming air and a large contributor to the total drag generated by the body, some 80% of the total drag equation in a time trial position.

What this requires is that the helmet features an outward flare to smooth the junction between the head and the shoulders of the rider, providing a more arrow-like profile rather than the bulky, blunt shift from neck to shoulder. In conjunction with this, the visors are often enlarged, either to close the gap between the rider’s arm and the helmet, or to create a turbulent flow of air that works for some rider positions. Think of the new Kask Mistral Pro visor as used by Filippo Ganna, but not all the riders on the Netcompany-Ineos team.

But that leads us to the next issue: some helmets work well with certain positions, and not with others. Often, these TT helmets are designed around a key rider associated with the sponsored team or the rider themselves. The Specialized TT5, for example, was designed in conjunction with Remco Evenepoel, while the Giro Aerohead II was designed in part for Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert. However, speaking with a WorldTour rider, they divulged that when a new TT helmet was released, aero testing confirmed that the previous version of the helmet was significantly faster on them than the new version.

Scott found a way to combat this, with its latest Split TT helmet featuring a modular design wherein the tail of the helmet can be switched between a wider tail fairing and a narrower one depending on the rider's shape and how they hold their head. This was previously done with the Giro Selector TT helmet. Having two different designs gives scope to have one helmet with two different settings that can be faster across a broader range of rider positions.

Lidl-Trek takes this a step further by not having a time trial helmet from helmet sponsor Trek. Instead, the team uses a mix of different brands, selected after hours of wind tunnel testing with riders to find the helmet that will be fastest on them. This is the best approach, but sponsor commitments limit most teams in this regard.

What you can do to ensure that you go for the correct helmet

It's likely that, if you're reading this, your own helmet choice is not determined by sponsor commitment. Happily, this will leave you spoilt for choice when it comes to TT helmet shopping; but how do you choose the right shape for you?

A good general rule of thumb is that if you have a more upright position on the TT bike where your head extends above your back, you want a narrower-profiled helmet that won’t add to the surface area, with a tail that can fit as flush against your back as possible. Often this means wearing the helmet so that, when off the bike, you are not looking through the visor, and the helmet is rotated rearwards. However, when in the TT position, you are looking up through the visor.

If you move your head around a lot, or end up looking down, then a stubby profiled TT helmet is going to be the best option. The original Giro Aerohead, for example, or the old Kask Bambino cater for this sort of position, as does the POC Procen.

If, however, you are able to keep your back more horizontal with your head tucked, or aptly named ‘turtled’, then the spate of new wider-bodied TT helmets may work well. However, if possible, you want to measure the width of your shoulders along with the width of the TT helmet to ensure that, especially for narrower riders, it will not be too wide when worn.

Even then, the speed at which you race will also impact which helmet is fastest, but specific testing is required to determine this. Either wind tunnel or velodrome testing, using software such as MyWindSock, to the Chung Method.

Considerations for road helmets

There is still a consideration when it comes to road helmets, although the differences are not quite as extreme.

To an extent, the same principles apply: for a more upright head position, a narrow-profiled, shorter-tailed helmet will generally be faster. But when riders are better able to stay in a flatter-backed breakaway style position, road helmets with extended tails such as the Trek Ballista can perform better. Additionally, the shape of that helmet channels the air across the back, but is often less effective when worn in a more upright position, or if riders drop their heads down more. The Giro Eclipse Pro, for example, excluded a longer tail because aerodynamically it was found not to make a large difference in the optimal position, but the short tail design was faster across a far wider array of head positions.

Pro cycling does not really have a transfer window, with teams allowed to announce moves whenever they like for next season, given agreement between the relevant parties. However, August is when announcements start to occur for 2027, out of habit if nothing else, and some moves have already been revealed.

Rather than announcing each transfer individually, we will collect together all the transfers in the men's WorldTour and Women's WorldTour pelotons here, as and when they are officially revealed.

Officially, August 1 is the opening of the first registration period – 1 to 15 August – in which riders can switch teams, with another registration period from October to the end of the year, but in practice, it is the start of announcements for 2026. However, if a rider is to change teams mid-season, that deal needs to be done now.

The news does not need to be confirmed until 31 December, but those canny marketing departments at teams know when to let things be made public. This page will be updated throughout the rest of the year, as more is confirmed. We will write more about the bigger moves, and list the rest down below.

Big moves

Santiago Buitrago signs for NSN Cycling

Still only 26, two-time Giro d'Italia stage winner Santiago Buitrago will ride for NSN Cycling next season, departing Bahrain-Victorious, where he has spent his whole career to date.

"I still feel I have a lot of room to grow, so in the next three years, I want to keep taking steps forward and become an increasingly complete and consistent rider," he said.

Pavel Bittner departs Picnic PostNL for Pinarello Q36.5

In a tough season for Picnic PostNL, Pavel Bittner has been a small bright spark, with six top-six finishes, including second at Scheldeprijs. It is another blow, then, that he will be joining ProTeam Pinarello Q36.5 on a two-year contract from next year.

"My ambition is to become a consistent winner, fight for victories in the biggest races and keep improving every year," he said.

Mikel Landa returns to Euskaltel-Euskadi

Basque climber Mikel Landa will rejoin the team where he began his professional career, Euskaltel-Euskadi, from 2027. The 36-year-old, a two-time podium finisher at the Giro d'Italia, will leave Soudal Quick-Step after three years with the Belgian squad.

Mauro Schmid joins Pinarello Q36.5

Tour de France stage winner Mauro Schmid will ride for Pinarello Q36.5 instead of Jayco AlUla next season, linking up again with team boss Doug Ryder.

“Doug gave me the opportunity to turn professional, so there was already a strong connection,” Schmid said in a press release. “But what really convinced me was seeing how much the team has evolved over the last two or three seasons. Especially as a Swiss rider, becoming part of this project makes it even more special."

Valentin Madouas heads to Cofidis

Former French national champion Valentin Madouas will "relaunch" his career with ProTeam Cofidis, after nine years with Groupama-FDJ United. The 30-year-old said the "decision was a matter of the heart".

Men's WorldTour transfers

Alpecin-Premier Tech

In: Iván García Cortina (Movistar), Casper van Uden (Picnic PostNL), Madis Mihkels (EF Education-EasyPost)

Bahrain Victorious

Out: Santiago Buitrago (NSN Cycling)

Decathlon CMA CGM

EF Education-EasyPost

In: Gavin Sherry, Juan Felipe Rodriguez (both EF Education-Aevolo)

Out: Madis Mihkels (Alpecin-Premier Tech)

Groupama-FDJ United

Out: Valentin Madouas (Cofidis)

Jayco AlUla

Out: Mauro Schmid (Pinarello Q36.5)

Lotto-Intermarché

In Milan Donie, Kamiel Eeman, Victor Vaneeckhoutte (Lotto-Groupe Wanty)

Lidl-Trek

Out: Tim Torn Teutenberg (Soudal Quick-Step)

Movistar

In: Javier Cubillas (Movistar Academy)

Out: Iván García Cortina (Alpecin-Premer Tech), Lorenzo Milesi (Soudal Quick-Step)

Netcompany-Ineos

Out: Victor Langelliotti (XDS Astana)

NSN Cycling

In: Santiago Buitrago (Bahrain Victorious)

Picnic PostNL

Out: Casper van Uden (Alpecin-Premier Tech), Pavel Bittner (Pinarello Q36.5)

Red Bull-Bora-hansgrohe

Soudal Quick-Step

In: Lorenzo Milesi (Movistar), Tim Torn Teutenberg (Lidl-Trek)

Out: Mikel Landa (Euskaltel-Euskadi)

UAE Team Emirates-XRG

Uno-X Mobility

Visma-Lease a Bike

XDS Astana

In: Victor Langelliotti (Netcompany-Ineos)

Out: Florian Kajamini (MBH Bank CSB Telecom Fort)

Women's WorldTour transfers

AG Insurance-Soudal

Canyon-SRAM

In: Jasmin Liechti (NEXETIS)

EF Education-Oatly

FDJ United-SUEZ

In: Kate Courtney

Fenix-Premier Tech

Human Powered Health

Lidl-Trek

Liv AlUla Jayco

Movistar

Picnic PostNL

SD Worx-Protime

UAE Team L'IMAD

Uno-X Mobility

Visma-Lease a Bike

Demi Vollering collapses on the hot tarmac. Grasping at her helmet strap, she wrestles to free her sweat-soaked head, while her FDJ United-Suez soigneur pours cold water over her shoulders. “Demi, you’re amazing,” a fan shouts through the melee of TV cameras. Vollering’s sports director then appears from out of a team car and brandishes a double thumbs-up to the sprawled-out Dutchwoman. She musters her last reserves of energy to smile back.

Stage four’s time trial went about as perfectly as it could have for Vollering. So much so, that anyone passing by the scene beyond the finish line in Dijon might have thought she had won. Instead, she finished third, 18 seconds behind the stage winner Marlen Reusser (Movistar) but, crucially, almost two minutes ahead of the defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike).

The result puts Vollering in a cosy position in the GC. Approaching the race’s midway point, she has an advantage over everyone but Reusser, who she trails by just 14 seconds. Her other GC rivals – Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L’IMAD), Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-Sram), Paula Blasi (UAE Team L’IMAD) and Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime) – are all around a minute back. Ferrand-Prévot, meanwhile, has sunk to 14th place, and faces the tall order of overhauling two minutes and 13 seconds.

“I’m really happy about the TT,” Vollering said outside her FDJ bus afterwards. In the background, her team staff hugged and high-fived. “I knew that today was really a TT for the TT specialists, for the big powerhouses. I prepared myself mentally that it was possible to lose some time here on riders like Marlen, for example, but that I was so close makes me happy.”

There was a long wait for reporters to speak to Vollering after the stage. Her post-race protocol, the press officer said, had to come first. Vollering began by spinning her legs quickly on the turbo trainer to flush out the lactic acid. She then clambered into an ice bath, before returning, a towel around her waist, to pen a few autographs; for one young boy, she pulled a bottle out of the cage of her bike, signed it, and placed it in his hands.

Some fans, it’s clear, believed they were looking at this race’s winner-elect. Vollering’s entourage were careful not to get ahead of themselves.

“It’s like a boxing match – we still have five rounds to go,” said Stephen Delcourt, FDJ team manager. “Today we knew it was an individual effort, and for us, it was important to put pressure on the others and make a gap. I think Demi made a gap with the other five contenders, but we still have Marlen. Marlen is a few seconds ahead of Demi, and we don’t expect Marlen to explode.”

Reusser, in a way, is the wild card of this year’s Tour. While her Grand Tour pedigree has already been proved – she finished second at both the Giro d’Italia Women and the Vuelta Femenina – this is her first time leading a team against all of the peloton’s top riders, and it’s hard to know how she’ll stack up.

“I think every race in my life I am underestimated,” the Swiss rider, a former domestique for Vollering at SD Worx-Protime, said in a press conference the day before the race began. After her victory on day four, she made clear her “Project Dijon” – her plan to win the stage and take the yellow jersey – has now turned into “Project Nice”.

“I'm super happy that I'm here in yellow,” Reusser said. “If I stand in Nice in yellow, I'm even happier, but you don't know. We've seen it in so many stage races; so many things can happen, it can change. I'm not at all like, ‘I have yellow, I've got to have it in Nice,’ but I think it's possible.”

Ferrand-Prévot and her Visma-Lease a Bike team, similarly, are far from ruling out their chances of winning. “This year is not lost,” sports director Jos van Emden said. “Everything is still possible.”

If Reusser is the unknown entity, then Ferrand-Prévot is the sure bet. Vollering will only need to think back 12 months to remember what it’s like to be mercilessly dropped by the Frenchwoman; in just the final 9km of the Col de la Madeleine last year, Ferrand-Prévot put over three minutes into the Dutchwoman. It’s a fact that makes her current two-minute deficit seem a lot less significant.

“This year, we have Ventoux, which is a long climb, too,” Ferrand-Prévot teased after her time trial losses. “It’s good now to not be the favourite. It’s like, ‘Ok, I need to catch them.’ It’s also something I like.”

A knockout blow could come at any time, to return to FDJ boss Delcourt's boxing analogy. Vollering's sparring well, but she mustn't drop her guard.

“We have only one goal,” Delcourt said. “I repeat: we have only one goal, and it’s the yellow [jersey].

“We know that Demi is in super shape. We want to take care of her. We know that a crash can arrive at any second on any corner. Now we want to be positive to search for another step on the total group for tomorrow, to be close to Demi, to protect her, and put pressure on the others.”

There's still plenty of road to race yet.

Despite being just 21 kilometres long, the Stage 4 individual time trial at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift delivered the first major shake-up in the general classification. As anticipated, world time trial champion Marlen Reusser (Movistar) powered to victory, while the rest of the GC contenders spent the day trying to limit their losses.

Riders like Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team ADQ) and Demi Vollering (FDJ-SUEZ) emerged from the day in strong positions, now sitting fifth and second overall respectively. Defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma | Lease a Bike), however, endured a nightmare, conceding more than two minutes and tumbling to 14th in the general classification.

For Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM), the day went exactly as planned. The 2024 Tour de France Femmes champion finished 13th on the stage, 1:08 behind Reusser, but successfully limited her losses to the other GC favourites and, crucially, finished ahead of Ferrand-Prévot before the race reaches the high mountains.

"The goal for today was to minimise losses to riders like Demi Vollering, Elisa Longo Borghini and Marlen Reusser," Niewiadoma-Phinney said after the stage. "Of course it's nice to be in front of Pauline ahead of Mont Ventoux and the other hard stages."

Heading into the Tour's first major climbing test, Niewiadoma-Phinney sits sixth overall, with just 1:09 separating the top six riders.

The Polish rider revealed she had invested heavily in improving her time trialling, fully aware of how important the stage could be in shaping this year's Tour.

"I felt that I found my flow. I spent huge amounts of time working on my TT skills, because as everyone knows, I wasn't the best at it," she said. "As you can see, if you believe in something and you put a good amount of work in, anything is possible."

Niewiadoma-Phinney was delighted with her performance and admitted she would have gladly accepted the result before rolling down the start ramp.

"One hundred percent. I'm super grateful for all the people that were with me on the journey to get to this place. The Tour de France is such a big goal for myself and the team. We want to come here to bring the yellow jersey home again. That result puts us closer to that dream."

She credited the ride to a collective effort that included technical work on her position, equipment and coaching, while jokingly acknowledging some advice from her husband, former American time trial specialist Taylor Phinney.

"I'm married to a TT specialist so, for once, I listened to his advice," she laughed. "I'm very lucky to be surrounded by professional people, my team looking for details to improve my position, Canyon taking me to a wind tunnel, my coach working on me physically. I think it was a combination of massive teamwork."

With the race now turning towards the mountains, Niewiadoma-Phinney said the Tour would now "properly start." Relieved to have the time trial behind her, she is eager to return to terrain that better suits her strengths.

"I was looking forward to this particular moment to be done with and focus on the climbs to come. Tomorrow is going to be a super hard stage. We're here to be aggressive, we have a strong team, and we want to do our best. We're in great shape, so what else can you do other than race your bike now?"

Pauline Ferrand-Prévot knew she wouldn’t win stage four’s time trial at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, but she maybe didn’t expect to tumble more than two minutes down the general classification.

Thirty-fourth on the day, the Frenchwoman finished 2:13 adrift of the stage winner, and new yellow jersey wearer, Marlen Reusser (Movistar), and 1:55 off last year’s runner-up, Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), her big GC rival.

As a result, the defending champion is now 14th overall, and will need to claw back time over the next five stages if she’s to retain her yellow jersey.

“I did my best and I pushed as hard as I could. Now there’s nothing I can do,” Ferrand-Prévot told the media beyond the finish line.

“It was quite a lot of stress. Even though I finished far off, I still prepared a lot. I’m glad this day is over.”

The 21km course between Gevrey-Chambertin and Dijon always suited the peloton’s mightiest specialists against the clock. Ferrand-Prévot, by contrast, a diminutive climber, hadn’t raced a time trial in more than five years, having switched her ambitions to mountain biking.

Asked ahead of the race if she felt she was starting from zero in her time trial preparation, she laughed that it was more “minus 10 – [but] I did my homework quite well”.

That preparation included wind tunnel testing and positional work to relieve pressure from the two surgeries she had had to treat iliac artery endofibrosis. This meant that she sat quite high in the saddle. “It wasn’t the prettiest sight, it wasn’t the fastest for everyone else in the peloton, but it was the fastest for me,” she said.

Attention will now turn at Visma-Lease a Bike to how Ferrand-Prévot can recover her GC position before Sunday's finale in Nice. “This year is not lost,” her sports director Jos van Emden said. “This is some kind of starting point.”

Wednesday’s fifth stage is expected to be raced like a one-day Classic, with eight categorised climbs on the route to Belleville-en-Beaujolais. There’s also the race’s queen stage still to come: a 21km climb to Mont Ventoux on day seven.

“Last year, on the Col de la Madeleine, I took quite a lot of time [ed – 3:03 to Vollering]. This year, we have Ventoux, which is a long climb, too,” Ferrand-Prévot said.

And in the face of disappointment, she picked herself up, and made sure to stay optimistic: “It’s also good now to not be the favourite. It’s like, ‘Ok, I need to catch them.’ It’s also something I like.”

Marlen Reusser powered to time trial victory on stage four of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift in Dijon on Tuesday, and moved into the yellow jersey.

The Movistar rider, time trial world champion, was the overwhelming favourite for the race against the clock, but she only pipped Lieke Nooijen (Visma-Lease a Bike) by four seconds. Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) finished third, 17 seconds behind Reusser, with Britain's Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM) in fourth, two seconds further back.

Reusser averaged 45.793kph over the 21km course, and led at the first checkpoint by 19 seconds, which narrowed to the finish. It's the 34-year-old's third Tour stage win, two of which have been time trials. Her final fastest time was 27:30.09.

On a blazing day in Burgundy, there was a lot of movement on general classification. The race leader after stage three, Sigrid Haugset (Uno-X Mobility), was replaced by Reusser after losing X to the winner, while Reusser's GC rivals Vollering, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM), Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) and Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD) all lost varying amounts of time.

Vollering was the best-of-the-rest in terms of those vying for yellow, losing just 17 seconds to Reusser, meaning she is just 14 seconds behind, in second. Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) is up to third overall, 54 seconds behind Reusser, after she finished seventh on Tuesday.

Longo Borghini is now fifth overall, her run-in hampered by a bike change, just ahead of Niewiadoma, who lost just 1:08 to Reusser in an event which is not thought to be her speciality. The biggest GC loser was defending champion Ferrand-Prévot, who lost 2:12 to Reusser, and now sits in 14th overall.

"I’m super super happy," Reusser said in her TV interview. "This was the idea that we had for a long time. It’s the first Tour de France that I saw as my goal for the year, I really targeted it. I am here as a leader, and I knew it was going to start in Switzerland, on Swiss national day, and we would have a TT on the fourth day, so it was our project Dijon. The yellow of the mustard.

"It was our project Dijon, and it worked out. It’s always so hard, and you know it’s not necessarily going to happen, but that it happened like this, I’m super happy."

A solid fastest time was set early by Sandrine Tas (Lotto Intermarché), who rode the course in 28:49.39, this was then bettered by her compatriot Lotte Claes (Fenix-Premier Tech), who went 24 seconds faster. This stood until Dutch rider Lieke Nooijen (Visma-Lease a Bike) went 50 seconds faster than Claes, and her time looked impregnable, until Reusser came along and pipped it.

The shift on general classification has set the race up perfectly ahead of a couple of hilly days, before the prospect of Mont Ventoux on Friday's stage seven. Stage five, from Mâcon to Belleville-en-Beajoulais, has eight classified climbs in 140km, with 2,880m of elevation in total.

Results

Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift 2026 stage four: Gevrey Chambertin > Dijon (21km)

1. Marlen Reusser (Sui) Movistar, in 27:30.9
2. Lieke Nooijen (Ned) Visma-Lease a Bike, +3s
3. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, +17s
4. Zoe Bäckstedt (GBr) Canyon-SRAM, +19s
5. Mischa Bredewold (Ned) SD Worx-Protime, +45s
6. Kristen Faulkner (USA) EF Education-Oatly, +54s
7. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, +54s
8. Lotte Claes (Bel) Fenix-Premier Tech, +54s
9. Riejanne Markus (Ned) Lidl-Trek, +1:01
10. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +1:02

General classification after stage four

1. Marlen Reusser (Sui) Movistar, in 11:47:36
2. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, +14s
3. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, +54s
4. Sigrid Haugset (Nor) Uno-X Mobility, +56s
5. Elisa Longo Borghini (Ita) UAE Team L'IMAD, +1:03
6. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, +1:09
7. Paula Blasi (Esp) UAE Team L'IMAD, +1:12
8. Anna van der Breggen (Ned) SD Worx-Protime, +1:17
9. Antonia Niedermaier (Ger) Canyon-SRAM, +1:43
10. Femke de Vries (Ned), +1:47

You can’t escape the tagline of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. It’s everywhere, on casquettes, on musettes, on advertising. It’s simple: “Watch the Femmes”. It’s a neat idea from title sponsors Zwift to encourage people to tune in to what has quickly become the biggest women’s bike race in the world.

I wish it was that easy. Only three of the nine stages of the Tour de France Femmes have been, or will be, broadcast in full: stage one around Lausanne, five from Mâcon to Belleville-en-Beaujolais, and the closing day in Nice. It means for the other six days, fans will have to put up with reduced television coverage. On top of the fact that the race is behind an expensive paywall in the UK and the USA, “Watch the Femmes” seems more like a dream than a reality.

Broadcasters TNT Sports (UK) and Peacock (US) cannot be bashed for this. Warner Bros. Discovery bought the rights to show all ASO races on its channel TNT in the UK; ASO commissioned France TV to produce the feed, and in that transaction made the apparent business decision that fans don’t need to see huge sections of the race.

This is the same ASO that gave us less than 90 minutes of footage from Paris-Roubaix Femmes in April. For all the deserved praise ASO gets for putting on marquee women’s races like this – albeit years too late – it is clear that the organiser should also be criticised for providing an average of less than two and a half hours a day of footage.

Screening the closing kilometres of races is nothing new, but the decision means that key moments are missed. This was made patently clear on Monday’s stage three, when Uno-X Mobility rider Sigrid Haugset attacked before the TV cameras began rolling, with 88km to go; this came well after overall favourite Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) crashed, with 143km to go. Fans could see it on social media, which is exactly how women’s cycling fans kept up with races over a decade ago. Times have moved on, ASO should, too. On a stage like Monday’s, with a first-category climb in the first 24km, it was obvious that things would happen before the film crews were in action.

Start-to-finish coverage is not a pipe dream. It happened for every stage of the men’s Tour de France last month, and it’s available for plenty of WorldTour races, including the concurrently-running Tour of Poland. Fans wanting to watch all of the biggest women’s race of the year could instead watch all 232km of a forgettable sprint stage in Poland, but couldn’t see Haugset’s winning attack.

Choosing not to film huge sections of the race is a business decision made by ASO. Clearly, it’s one that holds back cycling, prevents fans from seeing key moments, denies smaller squads the opportunities to get television time by going in early breaks, and makes it harder to understand the whole picture of the race.

Stage four’s individual time trial saw 59 rider's start's not shown on TV, with coverage beginning at 3:45pm CEST, almost an hour after the first person headed down the start ramp. The winner could be in that cohort.

Fortunately, the cause of start-to-finish coverage is not something that myself and Cycling Weekly are alone in arguing for. On the eve of this fifth edition of the Tour de France Femmes, The Cyclists’ Alliance (TCA), the independent body that represents the women’s peloton, warned that partial coverage would mean fans miss “the attacks, the tactics, and the moments that could define the race”.

Kate Verroneau, director of women’s strategy at Zwift, the race’s title partner, posted on Instagram on Monday: “Moments like this are exactly why I’m so passionate about getting more eyes on women’s cycling. It’s no longer enough to broadcast only part of the race.

“When we miss the opening hours, we miss the attacks, the risks, the stories, and often the very moments that define a stage. Change is coming, but only if we keep working together. Fans, sponsors, media, riders and teams all have a role to play. Keep raising your voices, keep tuning in. These athletes are putting on a show. Let’s make sure the whole world gets to Watch the (full coverage) Femmes.”

Former world champion Lizzie Deignan was perplexed by the lack of coverage on For The Love of Cycling: “It was very hard to follow from home, it was like back in the old days, refreshing newsfeeds, trying to figure out what’s going on. There’s no substitute for footage. I don’t really understand why that can happen.”

TNT Sports’ Orla Chennaoui put it simpler in an Instagram reel: “What the heck? We still, despite how proven the interest is, we cannot get live TV coverage. ASO, what are you doing?”

The beauty of a Grand Tour is to see the race play out in its entirety, to see a whole country, to understand a complete storyline. To only show part of the race is to deny fans the whole plot, the whole work of art. Imagine going to see The Odyssey and only being allowed to watch the final 90 minutes.

Women’s cycling deserves better, and we should be able to watch all of the Femmes.

This piece is part of The Leadout, the offering of newsletters from Cycling Weekly and Cyclingnews. To get this in your inbox, subscribe here.

If you want to get in touch with Adam, email adam.becket@futurenet.com.

Five WorldTour teams have been announced for the 2026 Lloyds Tour of Britain Men, as part of 18 squads for the race which begins on 2 September in Lincoln.

British team Netcompany-Ineos will be there, as they have for every Tour of Britain since 2010, along with recent Tour de France winners UAE Team Emirates-XRG. Also taking part are Belgium-based Soudal Quick-Step, the most successful team in the modern history of the event (having taken 27 stage wins), plus Decathlon CMA CGM (France) and NSN Cycling (Switzerland), who count British rider Lewis Askey among their ranks.

This is one better than the number of WorldTour teams who took part in 2024, but it’s significantly down from the nine who competed in Britain's biggest bike race last year, with Visma-Lease a Bike among the top teams not returning in 2026.

Because the Tour of Britain is a ProSeries event, rather than part of the WorldTour circuit, the UCI’s elite teams are not obliged to be part of the race, and several factors influence sporting directors’ decisions about whether or not their squads should participate.

For starters, the Tour of Britain overlaps with the Vuelta a Espana, which is a WorldTour event. Once upon a time, teams would toss up whether to use the Tour of Britain or the Vuelta as a warm-up for the UCI World Road Racing Championships, which are due to be held in Quebec, Canada, 20–27 September. However, this year the British tour has been reduced to a five-day format – to maintain equity with the Tour of Britain Women’s race – which has arguably reduced its appeal as ideal preparation event.

Another undeniable factor impacting the decision-making process of teams based in the European Union, when contemplating the pros and cons of taking part in the Tour of Britain, are the significant additional costs and logistical hurdles caused by Brexit.

Nevertheless, the competition for the green jersey will be intense, and joining the WorldTour teams will be several pro teams, including Pinarello Q36.5 – who count 2022 Tour of Britain runner-up Tom Pidcock and current national road race champion Fred Wright among their squad – and Swiss team Tudor, who finished third overall in last year’s team’s classification.

Flanders-Baloise (Belgium) are returning for their 13th time at the Tour of Britain, having won the first version of the modern race in 2004 and taken home the king of the mountains jersey in 2025, thanks to the climbing skills of Victor Vercouillie, while Modern Adventure Pro Cycling from the USA are making their debut.

Eight UCI Continental teams are also taking part for the first time, including St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 from France, who have a 30-year history in the sport and have participated in the Tour de France participations, and the Germany based squad Bike Aid, who promote cycling in developing countries and champion humanitarian and social causes.

Completing the line-up is the Great Britain Cycling Team, participating in the tour for the 19th time, providing home fans with a chance to see the country’s most promising riders racing against the world’s best teams on home roads.

“With experienced teams and exciting emerging talent all represented, fans coming to watch can look forward to five days of world-class, competitive racing at the Lloyds Tour of Britain,” said Lloyds Tour of Britain Race Director Jonny Clay.

“The line-up will showcase what makes Britain such a special place to race, producing some entertaining racing across five challenging stages. We look forward to another memorable edition of the Lloyds Tour of Britain that celebrates the best of cycling in this country.”

Full team line-up for the Tour of Britain

UCI WorldTour Teams: Decathlon CMA CGM (France), Netcompany-Ineos (Great Britain), NSN Cycling (Switzerland), Soudal Quick-Step (Belgium), UAE Team Emirates-XRG (UAE).

UCI Pro Teams: Modern Adventure Pro Cycling (USA), Pinarello Q36.5 Pro Cycling (Switzerland), Flanders-Baloise (Belgium), Tudor Pro Cycling (Switzerland).

UCI Continental Teams: APS Pro Cycling by Cadence Cyclery (USA), Bike Aid (Germany), BHS-PL Beton Bornholm (Denmark), Lucky Sport Cycling (Sweden), St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93 (France), Storck-MRW Bau (Germany), Tarteletto-Isorex (Belgium), United Shipping (Hungary).

National teams: Great Britain Cycling Team

The 2026 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift has its first significant day for the battle for general classification on Tuesday 4 August with stage four's 21km individual time trial from Gevrey-Chambertin to Dijon.

Last year's race did not have a time trial, but this year's rolling effort should see the contenders for yellow split up before the mountains begin properly. There is just one time check, at 9.5km, the Lacets de Marsannay, which is actually the top of a 2km hill at 6.7%. After that, riders will crest the rise to Corcelles-les-Monts, which peaks at 300m at 4.8%. Neither of these climbs are categorised, and it's downhill to the finish in Dijon.

The first rider will be the lanterne rouge, or last woman on general classification, Romina Hinojosa (Lotto Intermarché) at 2:51pm CEST (1:51pm BST/8:51am EDT). Riders will then set out at minute intervals until Émilie Morier (St Michel-Preference Home-Auber93) at 4:48pm, when there will be two-minute gaps all the way to the last rider, Sigrid Haugset (Uno-X Mobility), who took control of the yellow jersey on stage three.

The GC favourites come late in the day, with Anna van der Breggen (SD Worx-Protime), a former TT world champion, off at 4:54pm, Antonia Nierdermaier (Canyon-SRAM) at 4:58pm, Vuelta España Femenina champion Paul Blasi (UAE Team L'IMAD) at 5:04pm, and reigning world champion Marlen Reusser (Movistar) at 5:08pm. They're followed by Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma-Lease a Bike) at 5:10pm, Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) at 5:14pm, Elisa Longo Borghini (UAE Team L'IMAD) at 5:16pm, and Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) at 5:24pm.

However, it won't just be the riders aiming for yellow who will aim for a solid ride, with contenders for the stage win also including British champion Zoe Bäckstedt (Canyon-SRAM), who sets of at 4:29pm, Cédrine Kerbaol (EF Education-Oatly) at 5:18pm, and Franziska Koch (FDJ United-Suez) at 3:51pm.

Tour de France Femmes stage 4 ITT start times

The race jury at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift will pay “particular attention” to riders’ clothing ahead of Wednesday’s individual time trial, following reports of bra padding to improve aerodynamics.

On Sunday, Dutch outlet Wielerflits reported that several women’s WorldTour teams had expressed concern about riders using larger, padded bras as a chest fairings – objects inserted into the skinsuit to smooth the airflow around the body.

Wielerflits said the practice had been seen previously in women’s cycling, including at the Paris 2024 Olympics.

Research suggests that large chest fairings can result in time gains of almost a second per kilometre.

UCI rule 1.3.032 specifically prohibits the use of any accessories that “modify the morphology” of a rider. Riders had previously been known to place water bottles or radios down the front of their jersey.

Following stage three of the Tour de France Femmes, the race organiser, ASO, shared a press release that warned extra checks will be present during stage four’s time trial.

The full statement read: “Riders must be to the final checks before the race (bikes and outfit) no later than 10 minutes before their respective start time. Particular attention will be paid to compliance with article 1.3.032 of the UCI regulations, including non-essential elements and clothing or other items/accessories worn by a rider (including but not limited to helmets, glasses, shoes or in-race communication devices) which could modify riders’ morphology.”

The UCI rulebook describes “non-essential elements” as “any element which does not have a purpose which is exclusively of clothing or protection, or which is not strictly necessary for the functionality of the clothing, or other item, or accessory”.

Any rider found to have worn “non-compliant" clothing will face disqualification and a fine of 50-200 CHF (£46-184, $62-248), according to the governing body’s regulations.

It is uncertain how the race jury will carry out checks for padded bras. Some reports have suggested inspections be done privately by female commissaires. Even then, confusion remains as to what exactly the jury will be looking for.

“The problem is how are you going to police it?” Lidl-Trek’s head of technical and innovation, Koen de Kort, told The Athletic. “That’s the biggest issue. You can say it’s not allowed [but] how can you say how much a woman needs? That’s time to get pretty much into a grey area of what you’re allowed to check.”

Stage four’s time trial stretches 21km between Gevrey-Chambertin and Dijon, with a 1.8km climb in the first half. It is scheduled to start at 14:51 local time (CET).

“Sad”, “strange”, and “a shame” are some of the words riders and sports directors used to describe the limited TV coverage of this year's Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift.

Just three of the nine stages – stage one around Lausanne, five from Mâcon to Belleville-en-Beaujolais, and the closing day in Nice – have been granted full, flag-to-flag broadcasts, with hours of coverage missing from the remaining six stages.

On Monday, Uno-X Mobility rider Sigrid Haugset attacked before the TV cameras began rolling, with 88km to go, and pulled off the farthest solo victory ever at the race. Had she made her move 5km later, fans at home would have been able to see it happen. Instead, the TV feed, licensed by the race organiser, ASO, missed it by around seven minutes.

“There wasn’t so much to see,” Haugset, the race’s new yellow jersey wearer, played down after the finish. “It wasn’t so much of a punchy attack, either... It was more like slowly drifting.”

Other riders, however, were more critical of the missed action when asked by Cycling Weekly.

“The best way to get more public is to show it properly,” said Paula Blasi (UAE Team L’IMAD). “Today, I felt it was such an incredible race. [I have] all the love for men’s [cycling], but when Tadej [Pogačar] goes, it is so easy to predict. With women’s racing, sometimes you have much more interesting moves. It’s quite sad that we cannot really watch it.”

On the eve of this fifth edition of the Tour de France Femmes, The Cyclists’ Alliance (TCA), the independent body that represents the women’s peloton, warned that partial coverage would mean fans miss “the attacks, the tactics, and the moments that could define the race”.

“For the biggest race in women’s cycling, partial coverage is no longer enough,” TCA wrote. “The demand is undeniable and we are asking for the coverage to catch up.”

TCA also criticised the broadcast of Paris-Roubaix Femmes earlier this year, describing it as a “massive affront to women’s cycling” that only the final hour and a half was shown live.

More than 26 hours of this year’s Tour de France Femmes will be broadcast live across the nine stages – an average of around two and a half hours a day. The men’s race, by comparison, was shown in full, every moment of every stage, for 21 days.

Carmen Small, sports director at EF Education-Oatly, believes the partial coverage of the women’s race is “a bit strange”.

“You would think they would do [full coverage] at least now. It’s only nine stages, it’s not that we’re having three weeks like the men,” she said.

TV coverage is particularly important for teams at the Tour as it gives them crucial airtime for their sponsors. “We race aggressively to show the jersey. We hope for results to show the jersey,” Small explained. “I mean, it’s all together, right? It’s a shame that they’re not doing the whole entire stage.”

Picnic PostNL’s Josie Nelson agreed. “I think for the biggest race of the year, they could probably pull it out the bag a bit better, to be honest,” she said. “On days like today, when everything kicks off at the start, it’s a shame that no one gets to see how the race pans out.”

Another key moment the TV broadcast missed on stage three was a crash involving one of the GC favourites, Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), which happened with 143km to go – 55km before the broadcast went live.

For those who weren't able to see it, the race organiser, ASO, shared a mobile phone video of the aftermath on social media.

Stephen Delcourt, Vollering’s FDJ United-Suez team manager, said he questioned ASO on the morning of the stage about broadcasting more of the race. “I don’t want to blame [ASO]. I know they’ve improved a lot of things this year, [by adding] a time trial and a ninth stage,” he said. “Before we had no Tour de France, we had nothing, we had no TV, and I think we’re improving every year.

“Yes, we dream about full coverage, especially for a race like this, because it was really beautiful at the beginning of the stage. You just need to be patient.”

The Tour de France Femmes continues on Tuesday with an individual time trial. Coverage is due to begin at 15:45 local time (CET), meaning the starts of at least 55 riders – 40% of the peloton – will not be broadcast.

“Women’s cycling has the audience and this race is the pinnacle of the sport,” TCA wrote on Instagram on Monday. “Now it needs full start-to-finish coverage.”

Correction: an earlier version of this article said that two stages were granted full broadcasts. This was corrected to three to reflect the flag-to-flag coverage of stage one.

"I was so dizzy at the finish, I couldn't lift my arms off the bike."

At the finish line of Stage 3 of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, Sigrid Ytterhus Haugset had nothing left.

The Norwegian spent some 85 kilometres off the front of the peloton solo, and reached the line in Poligny too exhausted to celebrate in style.

"I know my boyfriend will be so angry at me for not celebrating," she laughed afterwards. "But I couldn't. I could not lift my arms off the bike. It was impossible," she said in the post-race interview.

Instead, Haugset barely managed a one-handed victory salute, completely spent and overwhelmed by what had just happened.

In addition to delivering fans one of the most remarkable solo rides the race has ever seen, Haugset also delivered Norway several historic firsts.

With her performance, Haugset became the first Norwegian to win a stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, the first Norwegian rider to pull on the celebrated yellow jersey, and the author of what race broadcasters described as the longest successful solo victory in the history of the women's Tour.

When asked if winning a Tour stage was a dream come true, Haugset admitted that she'd never even considered the possibility.

"I feel like I have to say yes… but I never thought it was possible. So sitting here… it's unreal."

So who is the woman who has suddenly become one of the biggest stories of this year's Tour?

1. She comes from a tiny Norwegian village

Born on 1 March 1999, Haugset comes from Berkåk, a village of just 1,000 people in Trøndelag, central Norway.

2. She served in the military after high school

Haugset entered the Norwegian military after finishing high school.

Norway has mandatory conscription for men and women, although not every eligible citizen is selected to serve. Those chosen typically complete an initial 12-month period of military service before becoming part of the reserves.

3. She's a former runner

As a child, Haugset's passion had been football. She played throughout high school and later found success as a middle-distance runner.

Representing Rennebu IL and later Strindheim IL, her recorded personal bests include:

• 4min 49.10sec for 1,500 metres
• 10min 19.9sec for an indoor 3,000 metres
• 10min 27.05sec for an outdoor 3,000 metres
• 17min 40.46sec for 5,000 metres
  

4. Injuries changed the course of her career

"Where I come from, a small place in Norway, it was never an option to start cycling. Instead, we played football, handball, cross-country skiing, we went hiking and so on," says Haugset.

Instead, she came to cycling, as so many before her have, through injury.

Haugset has explained that two stress fractures in her lower back within six months forced her away from running. Looking for a way to stay fit, she spent countless hours on the indoor trainer before eventually buying a road bike to train outside.

Then she entered a Norwegian Cup race, and the rest, as they say, is history.

5. She only started racing bikes at 22

While many WorldTour riders have been racing since childhood, Haugset entered her first cycling race in 2021, at the age of 22.

She signed with Team Coop-Hitec Products later that year and raced with the programme through the end of 2025.

Her rise to the top level of the sport has been remarkably quick. Within five years of pinning on her first race number, she's now wearing the maillot jaune.

6. She's quietly become one of Norway's strongest time triallists

Haugset has collected four consecutive medals at the Norwegian elite national time trial championships between 2023 and 2026 —three bronze and one silver.

Other key career highlights include winning the Norwegian road race championships with a solo breakaway earlier this season, and a fourth place in the GC at the 2024 Vuelta a Extremadura Féminas.

Those performances highlighted the engine that powered her remarkable Tour solo today.

7. She raced Paris-Roubaix with a fractured hip

Paris-Roubaix Femmes is already one of cycling's toughest races, and in 2025, Haugset's ride was even more painful.

After crashing with 60 kilometres remaining in the race, Haugset climbed back on her bike to finish the race. Only afterwards did scans reveal she had fractured her hip.

She later admitted that, in hindsight, continuing probably wasn't the smartest decision, but in the middle of Paris-Roubaix, all she wanted to do was reach the velodrome.

“When you’re in a race, you want to finish,” she explained. She was subsequently sidelined for approximately two and a half months before returning later in the season and eventually earning a WorldTour contract with Uno-X Mobility.

8. She was originally selected as a climbing domestique

Haugset is currently on a two-year contract with Uno-X Mobility.

She was selected for the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift roster (her second appearance) not for her yellow-jersey potential but rather as a climbing domestique.

The team had designated Katrine Aalerud as its GC leader, with a target of finishing in the top 10. Haugset’s published role was to provide support later in hilly stages, although the team explicitly left open the possibility of allowing her to pursue stage opportunities from different race situations.

9. A huge day for Norway

With her performance in Poligny, Haugset didn't just win the biggest race of her career; she won big for Norway.

Haugset became the first Norwegian to win a stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and the first Norwegian woman to wear the yellow jersey.

In doing so, she joins an elite list of Norwegians who have worn the Tour de France yellow jersey, which includes just three others: male riders Thor Hushovd, Alexander Kristoff and, most recently, Torstein Træen.

In an incredible day of racing, Norwegian national champion Sigrid Haugset led for the majority of the route between Geneva and Poligny and held on to become the first Norwegian stage winner in the history of the Tour de France Femmes, securing a solo victory that sees her move from 46th place right into the leader's yellow jersey.

After attacking and taking the lead with 89km left to go, the Uno-X Mobility rider dug in deep and stayed ahead of the Belgian Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx - Protime), who battled alone and in vain to catch her. Haugset's heroic ride has seen her achieve the longest solo breakaway victory in Tour de France Femmes history, and the very first for a Norwegian rider.

Marianne Vos (Team Visma - Lease a Bike) crossed the line third and with that result moves into third place in the General Classification.

Kim Le Court (AG Insurance - Soudal) finished in fifth and maintains her second place in the GC, with Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez) also holding her third-place spot in the GC. However, erstwhile leader Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime), who was missing in action for most of today and finished 80th, has plummeted out of the top 10 and currently sits in 67th position.

The 156.5km-long stage, which took riders up into the mountains for the first time and saw the race move from Switzerland into France, was contested in blazing hot conditions, with temperatures hitting 37°C in the shade.

But that didn't deter Haugset, a tough cookie who once rode 58km of the infamously bumpy Paris-Roubaix race with broken hip. Wearing the colours of a Norwegian champion, the Uno-X Mobility rider pushed through the pain of her epic solo ride with Viking-like determination, and finished the stage with a broad grin.

"I never thought it was possible," said Haugset in the post-stage interview. "It's unreal. When I went, it wasn't many seconds, and I thought, yeah, she will catch me. And I thought: 'Shall I just drop down to her? Yeah OK, second is good.' But I kept on.

"I was thinking about all my teammates, and everyone cheering from home. And it was like, I had to give it all. And yeah... I can't believe that she didn't catch me. And in the Norwegian jersey – it's fantastic."

Early in the day, with 143km to go, race favourite and 2023 Tour de France Femmes winner Demi Vollering was involved in a crash, but the FDJ United–Suez rider was quickly back on her bike and riding again.

However, while Vollering and Kim Le Court (AG Insurance - Soudal Team) stayed in the chasing group, along with defending champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Team Visma - Lease a Bike) and Célia Gery (FDJ United - SUEZ), the story of today's stage was about the battle between Haugset and her only real challenger, Lotte Kopecky.

The Belgian came within 10 seconds of catching Haugset with 10km left to go, but the Norwegian dug deep and as the finish line came within 5km the gap went back out to well over 30 seconds and kept growing.

RESULTS

TOUR DE FRANCE FEMMES STAGE THREE: Geneva › Poligny (156.5km)

1. Sigrid Haugset (Nor) Uno-X Mobility in 4:05:59
2. Lotte Kopecky (Bel) SD Worx - Protime, + 1:24
3. Marianne Vos (Ned) Team Visma - Lease a Bike, + 2:48
4. Usoa Ostolaza (España) Laboral Kutxa - Fundación Euskadi
5. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal
6. Noemi Rüegg (Sui) EF Education-Oatly
7. Célia Gery (Fra) FDJ United - SUEZ
8. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly
9. Malwina Mul (Pol) Cofidis
10. Monica Trinca Colonel (Ita) Liv AlUla Jayco, all at the same time

GENERAL CLASSIFICATION AFTER STAGE THREE

1. Sigrid Haugset (Nor) Uno-X Mobility in 11:17:56
2. Kim Le Court-Pienaar (Mau) AG Insurance-Soudal, + 2:02
3. Demi Vollering (Ned) FDJ United-Suez, + 2:06
4. Noemi Rüegg (Sui) EF Education-Oatly, + 2:10
5. Marianne Vos (Ned) Team Visma - Lease a Bike, "
6. Cédrine Kerbaol (Fra) EF Education-Oatly, "
7. Elisa Longo Borghini (Italian) UAE Team L'Imad, "
8. Kasia Niewiadoma (Pol) Canyon-SRAM, "
9. Puck Pieterse (Ned) Fenix-Premier Tech, "
10. Niamh Fisher-Black (NZ) Lidl - Trek, "