Demi Vollering took a spectacular and career-defining win at the summit of the Col du Tourmalet in the Pyrenees, to take over the lead in the Tour de France Femmes, with only Sunday’s 22km time trial remaining.
The SD Worx rider emphatically shattered the stalemate with her Dutch compatriot, Annemiek van Vleuten, attacking with a little over 5km of the stage remaining. At the finish line, Vollering had pulled out more than two and a half minutes on Van Vleuten.
But the longstanding and sometimes bitter rivalry between the pair almost cost them their chances of overall victory, when they feuded over tactics during the stage.
In the swirling Pyrenean mists enveloping the summits of the Col d’Aspin and Tourmalet, Van Vleuten and Vollering, the key protagonists in the peloton, continued the cat and mouse game that has characterised this race and much of the season.
Van Vleuten had initiated the first meaningful moves of the stage, 35km from the finish, as the peloton broke apart on the unrelenting climb of the Aspin. The 2022 winner’s acceleration took Katarzyna Niewiadoma and Vollering with her and the trio built a lead on the winding bends to the summit.
Behind them, the fatigue from six days of racing through the Massif Central took its toll, with many riders enduring a solitary march of suffering to the summit. Seconds lost in earlier stages quickly became minutes in the mountains.
But the longstanding antipathy between Van Vleuten and Vollering became all too apparent on the descent from the Col d’Aspin as they refused to chase Niewiadoma, who had moved ahead on the fast drop towards Sainte-Marie-de-Campan.
With the Pole extending her lead, the Dutch pair, unwilling to take the initiative, freewheeled behind, with Van Vleuten heard to say to Vollering: “This is not good for the both of us.” Vollering pointedly ignored her.
At the foot of the long haul to the summit of the Tourmalet, they were joined by a second group containing overall race leader, Vollering’s teammate, Lotte Kopecky, and a select group of other contenders. That included Ashleigh Moolman Pasio of the AG Insurance Soudal Quick-Step team, Juliette Labous, riding for Team DSM-Firmenich and a 2022 stage winner, Cecilie Uttrup Ludwig, of FDJ-Suez.
Although they had Niewiadoma in sight for much of the climb, she led by half a minute as she entered the closing 10km of the stage. Behind her, the group containing Vollering and Van Vleuten climbed into the mist and maintained their pursuit until the stalemate was finally ended by Vollering’s definitive attack on the approach to the ski resort at La Mongie.
Vollering’s revenge on Van Vleuten, who dominated the mountain stages of last year’s race in the Vosges and was targeting a grand slam of this year women’s Grand Tours of Spain, Italy and France, was complete.
A peloton diminished by fatigue and also by a rash of disqualifications by a strict jury of commissaires, now faces one final challenge in Pau, which, although largely flat, includes an uphill finish into the Place Verdun. Barring a catastrophe, Vollering, so distraught at defeat last year, now has overall victory assured.
The defending champion will expect to at least finish on the podium but with Kopecky seven seconds behind her in the overall standings, she will have to be at her very best.
