Thanks for reading today. Hope you enjoyed the first stage of the 2022 Tour de France Femmes. You can join *checks notes* me for the 21st and final stage of the men’s race right here:
And here it is:
Jeremy Whittle’s stage one report will be coming right up ...
The Polish rider Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon–SRAM) tells Eurosport that she thought today’s stage was “surprisingly easy”. “I was expecting it to be harder,” Niewiadoma says. “I feel like everyone just wanted to feel safe and cautious. There was nothing crazy happening. It was a nice first stage for sure. Maybe I expected like a chaotic race, and hectic, like everyone constantly fighting for position.”
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The moment Wiebes won it, via Tour de France Femmes on Twitter:
🇳🇱 @lorenawiebes for the win!
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) July 24, 2022
Victoire de @lorenawiebes 🇳🇱 sur la plus belle avenue du monde !#TDFF #WatchTheFemmes pic.twitter.com/4bM33Zjq9y
Top five on stage one:
1. Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM)
2. Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma)
3. Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx)
4. Rachele Barbieri (Liv Racing Xstra)
5. Emma Norsgaard Bjerg (Movistar)
Lorena Wiebes has a chat: “It’s amazing, the team did an amazing job, as a team we worked for this moment ... I’m really happy with this win, it was a long sprint, and a hard sprint ... I expected Marianne to do a long sprint, but it’s nice to win.
“I was quite relaxed before the start. We did everything as normal but of course I was quite nervous before the final. It’s amazing [to have yellow]. I’m really happy with this, the whole team deserved this ... it was really close, but luckily I could accelerate one more time to the finish line.”
Adam Blythe on Eurosport thinks Wiebes had slightly smoother tarmac on the left-hand side.
Marianne Vos speaks to Eurosport: “It’s a fast race, a wide road, and it’s more bumpy than you think on television. The team did a perfect job from two laps out, keeping me safe ... and yeah, everything went perfect, but Lorena was in a good position and I couldn’t meet her speed ... I think we did everything right ... when you can’t blame yourself for doing anything wrong, I think we just have to say that Lorena was perfect today, and she had a deserved win.”
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The lead-out was hectic, as you’d expect. Vos looked perfectly positioned into the final corner, but then seemed to get a bit isolated. She had two teammates, then one, and decided to go long. That looks like a mistake in hindsight, because Wiebes had a clear run on the left-hand side of the road, and she showed her raw speed and power to come past Vos and take a very impressive stage win. Wiebes will be in yellow tomorrow for stage two. I think had the Jumbo-Visma lead-out been a bit more organised, and Vos had waited to launch her sprint, her acceleration would have won it. But in a long drag race over 300m Wiebes had the superior power.
Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) wins Tour de France Femmes stage one!
What a sprint – and what a win by Wiebes, who olds off Marianne Vos by a bike length or so!
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1km to go: Ellen van Dijk (Trek-Segafredo) is on the front!
2.3km to go: Verhulst is caught by the bunch. Movistar Team lead the way.
4km to go: Verhulst is awarded the prix de la combativité (most aggressive rider). And rightly so. Behind her, Vos and Wiebes and their respective teams are fighting for position, among others, including the world champion Elisa Balsamo (Trek-Segafredo).
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4.8km to go: The gap is 15”.
5.7km to go: Verhulst’s lead is down to 24secs. There is another crash in the bunch and Amanda Spratt (Team BikeExchange–Jayco) is one of those involved.
6.8km to go: The bunch passes the start/finish line for the final lap and the bell rings out in Paris. It’s already been fast and furious, but the next several kilometres is going to be another level.
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8.5km to go: Up front, Verhulst’s lead is 33”. There are thousands of fans cheering on the riders from the roadside.
9km to go: Worryingly, two ambulances are attending to Castrique and they are preparing to put her on a stretcher. Best wishes to her for a speedy recovery.
10km to go: Alana Castrique (Cofidis) has abandoned after crashing heavily.
11km to go: The lead for Verhulst is 35”. It’s a very healthy lead, although she has virtually zero chance of making it stick.
13km to go: It may only be 80km or so, but this has been a draining day in the saddle for the riders to kick off this eight-stage race. Up front, Verhulst is shown speeding over the cobbles, her handlebars vibrating wildly as she negotiates the rough road surface.
15km to go: Gladys Verhulst (Le Col-Wahoo) has grabbed a 26sec lead in front of the peloton with a solo effort. But the sprinters’ teams are massing at the front of the bunch and beginning to fight for position on the road, attempting to take control of this race.
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Femke Markus (Parkhotel Valkenburg) wins the climb and KOM jersey!
A fierce three-way fight ends with the Dutch rider nabbing two points in the KOM competition, and guarantees her the polka-dot jersey this evening. The three escapees were only a couple of seconds ahead of the very strung-out peloton, and Markus produced a devastating burst of power to take the prize. Ysland (Uno-X Pro Cycling) made a break for it, but was overhauled ... she does have a solitary KOM point to show for her efforts.
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21km to go: Next up will be the solitary categorised climb of the day. A group of three riders, Lach (Ceratizit–WNT), Markus (ParkHotel Valkenburg) and Ysland (Uno-X) go clear!
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Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) wins the second intermediate sprint!
26km to go: That was a hotly-contested race for the second intermediate sprint point. Kopecky throws her bike at the line and pips Alexandra Manly (BikeExchange-Jayco) and Maria Confalonieri (Ceratizit–WNT) into second and third respectively. Manly must have thought she had that one, having finished third in the first sprint of the day.
1) Kopecky (25pts)
2) Manly (20pts)
3) Confalonieri (17pts)
4) Roseman-Gannon (15pts)
5) Williams (13pts)
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27km to go: The moment that the race director Marion Rousse waved the flag and started the Tour de France Femmes 2022.
🚩 The real start has been given, the race is on!
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) July 24, 2022
🚩 Le départ réel est donné, la course est lancée ! #TDFF #WatchTheFemmes pic.twitter.com/I8wMW8aAUC
30km to go: Henrietta Christie (Human Powered Health) powers across to Allinn up front, and keeps on going, launching a solo attack of her own. Allinn manages to latch on to her wheel and they soon have a gap of 17sec.
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31km to go: This has been a massive dig from Allin – such an impressive feat to hold the peloton at bay on her own for this amount of time. She still has a lead of 12sec but will doubtless be swallowed up by the bunch before the next sprint point.
34km to go: Allin rolls across the finish line, solo, with an 11sec lead. The commentators on Eurosport are discussing the slightly weird fact that today’s category-four climb is on the Champs-Élysées. Definitely a big-ring climb and one for the more powerful riders rather than the pure climbers ... Maybe Vos can go for the green, the polka-dot and yellow jerseys?
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38km to go: Pauline Allin (Arkea) is now off the front. She has a lead of 15sec and she keeps a high cadence and stays in a big gear to try and keep her advantage, taking a peek back down the road to see how far she’s got. Several riders are trying to get across.
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41km to go: The top five in that sprint were as follows:
1) Vos (25pts)
2) Wiebes (20pts)
3) Manly (17pts)
4) Kopecky (15pts)
5 Confalonieri (13pts)
So encouraging signs for Jumbo-Visma as they aim for the stage win with Vos, the legendary rider who took Olympic gold in London five days shy of exactly 10 years ago. In around 13km we’ll have the second and final intermediate sprint point.
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Marianne Vos (Jumbo-Visma) wins the first intermediate sprint!
48km to go: There is a massive injection of pace from the main bunch approaching the intermediate sprint, so their green-jersey hopefuls can fight it out for the points. The breakaway is duly reeled in, and Marianne Vos is led out expertly by Jumbo-Visma, bursting away to take a comfortable victory in the dash for the line. She shows that trademark acceleration and Lorena Wiebes (Team DSM) has no hope of coming past her, but places second. Alexandra Manly (BikeExchange-Jayco) is third.
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54km to go: The main bunch rolls over the start/finish line for the fourth time. The two up front are working remarkably well, and have fashioned an advantage of 39sec. The first intermediate sprint will be coming up in a few minutes.
57km to go: The two-rider break of Mischa Bredewold (ParkHotel Valkenburg) and Emily Newsom (EF Education-Tibco-SVB) have a 29sec advantage on the main bunch. A solo rider, Morgane Coston (Arkea) is now trying to bridge across and is about 14sec down.
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59km to go: If you are wondering how you can watch this live, 10,000 eight-day passes for the Tour de France Femmes coverage have been made available here. Whether or not they are all gone, I cannot say, but could be worth a try.
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63km to go: Urska Zigart (BikeExchange-Jayco) was the lone escapee (according to the official website) but was reeled in and now Mischa Bredewold (ParkHotel Valkenburg) is visible at the front with Emily Newsom (EF Education-Tibco-SVB) in a two-woman break that has 11secs.
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66km to go: The average speed is nudging 45km/h so that’s a pace as hot as the Paris weather. When I said the mood was relatively relaxed in the peloton, on reflection, that was off the mark. It’s perhaps a bit less chaotic than we might have expected, but there will be plenty of stress in the bunch. That eight-rider breakaway was reeled in. We have another solo attack.
69km to go: Seven more riders have bridged to Buijsman, and we now have an eight-rider breakaway up the road with a lead of around 10secs over the peloton. Victoire Berteau (Cofidis) is among them.
70km to go: The official Tour de France Femmes Twitter account is @LeTourFemmes – why not give them a follow?
🚴♀️ The peloton is heading to the km 0.
— Le Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift (@LeTourFemmes) July 24, 2022
🚴♀️ Le peloton du #TDFF se dirige vers le départ réel sur les Champs Élysées. #WatchTheFemmes pic.twitter.com/AiDRy79FLt
71km to go: The Dutchwoman Nina Buijsman (Human Powered Health) has clipped off the front, and impressively managed to distance the entire peloton with her solo attack. She has a lead of about 12secs, I reckon, although there is no live timing on the screen at the moment.
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75km to go: One lap completed. Perhaps surprisingly the bunch is all together and while the pace is high, the mood looks relatively relaxed. There were a few attacks on that first lap, but nothing that’s led to breakaway being formed.
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77km to go: Amandine Fouquenet (Arkea-Samsic) jumps off the front of the bunch and builds an advantage of a couple of seconds, but is soon swallowed up by the chasing pack. The riders take a high-speed left-hander adjacent to the river Seine, before tackling the famous underpass for the first time, emerging from the darkness and through another left-hand bend.
81km to go: The peloton is strung out initially, but is now bunched back together and it all calms down. But not for long – there are more attacks before the riders loop around the Arc de Triomphe for the first time.
Predictably enough it’s a boiling hot day in Paris: 33C and sunny, and it will be considerably warmer than that out on the road.
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Just a touch over 1km to go until the flag drops ... we’ll surely see a big fight to form a breakaway right from the off. The riders are glued to the back of the official race car ... Marion Rousse waves her flag and we are racing on stage one of the Tour de France Femmes!
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Today’s stage consists of 12 laps of a 6.8km circuit in Paris. The intermediate sprints come with 46.9 m and 26.5km to go, so it will be interesting to see if we get a long-established breakaway who mops up points there, or if the bunch stays together and we see shorter-lived attacks from riders hoping to win the green jersey.
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The neutralised rollout of 5.2km has just begun.
William Fotheringham looks ahead to the eight-day Tour de France Femmes here:
Preamble
Since 2014 the Tour de France organisers’ nod to women’s racing was La Course, a one-day event tagged on to the end of the three-week men’s Tour. This year is different and a great leap forward: the Tour de France Femmes is an eight-day stage race which begins today with an 80km circuit race around Paris. It’s by no means the first time a multi-stage women’s Tour de France has been held, but it’s an extremely welcome development considering the ever-increasing demand for women’s racing and the increasing strength and depth in the peloton.
The varied 1,033km route winds its way eastwards from Paris all the way to a summit finish at La Super Planche de Belles Filles next Sunday, crucially showcasing the women’s event as one that richly deserves to stand alone.
Today’s Parisian circuit race is pretty much pan-flat, but two intermediate sprints and one category-four climb inside the final 20km, at Charles de Gaulle - Étoile (9e passage), will spice things up considerably before what will surely be a sprint finish. Some even fancy that Marianne Vos (Jumbo–Visma) might win it and take the yellow jersey.
The riders are about to roll out for the neutralised start. Allez!
