Kasia Niewiadoma still can’t believe she won the Tour de France. She knows she did because half of Poland has sent congratulatory messages, from famous footballers and the world’s No 1 tennis player Iga Swiatek to the president Andrzej Duda. “I feel like someone special, for sure,” she smiles. But the achievement is still sinking in.
“I have these realisations where I look at my husband and we just start laughing,” says Niewiadoma, who is one half of cycling’s power couple with American former rider Taylor Phinney. It is three days later and she is speaking from their home in Girona, Spain. “We’re like, what the heck?! We just cannot even comprehend it.”
