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.
