The signs had been there in the opening stages of the Tour de France Femmes, but the spotlight of the individual time trial made it painfully clear – Anna van der Breggen may have had the form to fight her way onto the podium of two Grand Tours already this year, though it wasn't holding at the same level for the third.
On stage 1, she had already ceded a little ground to many of her rivals, falling three seconds back from the top group on the punchy finish. However, it would have been simple to retrieve mere seconds if the SD Worx-Protime rider could just replicate the strength of the time trial performance delivered at the Giro d'Italia in June, where she won the race against the clock and in the process carved out a gap of more than a minute to the rest of the field, including world champion Marlen Reusser (Movistar).
