'I'm expecting the worst' – Tour de France Femmes peloton braced for iconic Mont Ventoux

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.