'The best female cyclist ever' - Marianne Vos shows timeless class with Tour de France Femmes stage 1 win

As if Marianne Vos ever had anything to prove, the 38-year-old showed again on Saturday why she is, in the words of her sports director, and any longtime fan of the sport, “the best female cyclist ever”.

The Dutchwoman – a former multiple world and Olympic champion – stormed to victory on stage one of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, fending off the puncheurs in Plumelec, and tagging her Visma-Lease a Bike team-mate Pauline Ferrand-Prévot on the line. Before the day’s stage, Vos already counted 257 wins to her name. She now has 258, and a yellow jersey on her shoulders.

“It was something I didn’t really think about going into the stage,” she said in her press conference. “Taking the win is a fantastic feeling, and then, as a bonus, taking the yellow jersey – I couldn’t really think or dream about that.”

By the time Vos arrived in the media hall on the outskirts of the Breton town, the sky had begun to darken. The clock's small hand ticked beyond the nine. And yet, as she sat in her yellow jersey, zipped up to her chin, the Dutchwoman seemed in no rush to leave.

After two winless editions of the race, having worn yellow for five days in 2022, Vos was savouring the moment.

“It’s cycling,” she said of her string of Tour podium places. “Sometimes you’re close, and sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

“Of course, it’s [a matter of] keeping the faith, but it’s also the faith that’s put in from the team. If they believe, you feel a little bit of pressure, but you also want to finish it off, and I think that’s what happened today. Everything came together.”

Arriving back at her team bus to a mass of French fans and cries of "holy shit!" from her team-mates, Ferrand-Prévot echoed the same sentiment. “The plan played out like a dream,” she said.

What that plan entailed was the Frenchwoman launching a flyer on the final climb, a move to “make the others work so Marianne can do her sprint from behind,” she explained.

“I didn’t really think [about winning]. I thought, ‘Make it to the end, and then we’ll see.’ I didn’t turn around because that’s no use.”

When Vos thrashed around her shoulder, only meters from the line, Ferrand-Prévot looked across and smiled. “I was relieved it was her,” she said, grinning again as she recalled the moment. “I thought, ‘Uff, it’s Marianne, not someone else.’”

Afterwards, the pair fell into each other’s arms. It was an embrace that held the experience of almost 30 world titles, honours the two riders have collected between them across multiple disciplines. It was also proof that, no matter how many decades of racing you’ve done, the feeling of winning remains just as sweet.

“We become stronger because of those two, and they helped each other to get this result,” said Visma’s sports director Jos van Emden.

The day’s standings read: first for Vos, and third for Ferrand-Prévot, just behind Kim Le Court (AG Insurance-Soudal), but with a few seconds’ time gap already to the rest of the GC contenders.

“It couldn’t have been better,” said Van Emden. “Well, one-two would have been better,” he added with a smile. “I didn’t see this coming, not this way, not this impressive.”

The win, for the Dutchman, only cemented Vos’s existing reputation. “She’s probably the best female cyclist ever. Of course, I’m not objective. But she keeps confirming that she’s the best,” he said. “You see, age doesn’t matter.”

At 38, and now in her 20th year as a pro, Marianne Vos is still at the very top.