The fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift kicks off in Vannes, France, on Saturday, July 26, with its hardest route and most competitive field yet.
Last week, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon//SRAM) made her intentions clear: she’s all in on defending her title. We’ve been seeing rather little of the Polish champion, which has been intentional. Rather than racing the Giro d’Italia Women, she’s been focusing on her training.
“I really put a lot of hard work into this race. You never know how everyone else is, but I’m just excited to see where everything that we did, especially on training camp, will put us,” she said. “I just want to let my legs talk once we race.”
And they’ll need to, because this year’s field of yellow-jersey-contenders is absolutely stacked.
There’s former Tour winner and last year’s runner-up, Demi Vollering, who leads a very strong FDJ-Suez team. SD Worx Protime with two GCcards to play in Anna van der Breggen and Lotte Kopecky. Then, there’s also Marlen Reusser, now taking the lead at Movistar, Sarah Gigante (AG Insurance–Soudal) and Elisa Longho Borgini (UAE Team ADQ), all of whom are coming off strong showings at the Giro. And then there’s one of the biggest wild card of the year: multi-time world champion Pauline Ferrand-Prévot (Visma | Lease a bike)
The 33-year-old Française is a 15-time UCI Elite World Champion in road, cyclocross, gravel, and various mountain bike disciplines. She is also the reigning Olympic cross-country mountain bike champion.
She’s one of the most versatile and decorated cyclists in history, and having accomplished all there is in the dirt, Ferrand-Prévot signed a three-year contract with the Visma | Lease a bike in 2024, with the ultimate goal of winning the Tour de France in two-three years.
The French woman’s last full season on the road was in 2019 as part of the Canyon-SRAM team. Much has changed since then, not least of which is the professionalism and depth of the women’s peloton. Still, her reintroduction season has been beyond expectations with a third place at Strade Bianche Donne, a second place finish at Tour of Flanders and a resounding win at Paris-Roubaix.
While the Tour win is a longer-term ambition, the team is going all in this year to position her as high as possible in the GC.
"Pauline is completely ready physically and mentally", said Team manager Rutger Tijssen. "The past two months she has been able to prepare for the Tour in peace and quiet. We made a conscious decision not to ride races and focus on training. Whether that was the right choice, we will know on 3 August."
Ferrand-Prévot appears to be keen to keep expectations at bay, stating: “For me, this Tour is above all an important moment to discover what it is like to ride a stage race of this level. This step fits into a long-term plan in which I want to gain experience and grow. Every stage is an opportunity to learn and grow in the bigger plan we have in mind as a team."
She emphasised that 2025 is a year of learning.
“I'm allowed to make mistakes this year, so I don't do them again next year,” she said.
Among the biggest challenges of her comeback, have been familiarising herself with the course and getting re-acquainted with riding in a fast and ever-moving peloton.
“I’m used to knowing everything about the lap, every single corner, everything. In mountain biking, you choose your own line, but in the bunch you sometimes can’t do what you would like to do. So it’s about accepting that and staying calm, and focussed,” she said.
“I think we underestimate the mental aspect of road cycling, because even if you are in the bunch, not riding at full gas, but going for three, four hours, it costs you a lot of [mental] energy, and it’s hard to stay focussed for such a long period.”
Still, Ferrand-Prévot said she’s more excited than anxious.
"I am very much looking forward to racing in front of a French audience,” she said. “I remember saying to my mother when I was younger that I wanted to be a boy to be able to do the Tour de France. And now that’s possible for women.
“It’s also why I came back to the road, to be able to do the Tour de France.”
