Grace Brown had been focussed on the stage 8 time trial well before the Tour de France Femmes even got underway but as the day approached it perhaps held even greater significance as it represented the final hope of a stage podium appearance for FDJ-Suez at this year’s edition of the race.
Though in the end just two seconds stood between Brown and those podium steps, with the Australian rider coming fourth as SD Worx swept the top three spots on the final stage. Marlen Reusser won with a time of 29:15, while GC winner Demi Vollering was ten seconds back in second and Lotte Kopecky nudged Brown off the podium after finishing 38 seconds off Reusser’s scorching time. Brown was 40 seconds back.
The FDJ-Suez rider had taken a racing break before the Tour de France Femmes to prepare for both the Glasgow World Championships and the French Tour, which she told Cyclingnews before the race she was entering with belief but not expectation. The time trial was the stage she was focussed on and it was clear as she lay on the road after the stage that she’d given her all in the race against the clock.
“Considering the week that we’ve had I felt pretty good,” the Australian time trial champion told Australian broadcaster SBS in an interview conducted in the minutes after she finished. “I could do the power that I wanted to for most of it but yeah it was hard.”
“I had a few things, I lost my visor and I lost my chain at one point so it was not the smoothest run but I’m happy with the ride that I did. I did the best that I could.”
The rider, who set off 91st, was in the lead when she crossed the line, for a few minutes at least. However, Brown foreshadowed in the interview straight after she finished that her time in the hot seat may be over before she could even make it over there.
“I think Reusser is very close now and it looks like she might do a faster time than me but that is to be expected,” Brown told SBS with a quick shrug of the shoulders.
Reusser, who could be seen waving away the team cars of the riders she was catching along the way, did soon take that first spot but Brown held firm in second right until the final four riders, where there were some surprises.
It may not have been a shock to be displaced for second by the rider wearing yellow but it was perhaps a little more unexpected that Kopecky carried through her flying form from the sprints and the climbs right through to the time trial on the final stage. As a result Brown was off the podium in what the rider told the Australian broadcaster was “definitely not the easiest time trial I’ve done”.
“A time trial is always a really mentally challenging event but having the fatigue, and not just physical fatigue but mental fatigue, of seven days of racing and trying to have the focus you need for a time trial is really difficult.”
Though she’ll be looking for that focus again soon, with the 31 year old lining up as one of the key contenders at the elite women’s time trial at the Glasgow World Championships on Thursday August 10.
