{"id":311091,"date":"2025-08-02T05:07:13","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T05:07:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/311091\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T05:07:13","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T05:07:13","slug":"the-yellow-jersey-favourites-may-regret-not-dropping-sarah-gigante","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/311091\/","title":{"rendered":"The yellow jersey favourites may regret not dropping Sarah Gigante"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>                        <img decoding=\"async\"   src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/CORVOS_00038199-019.jpg\" alt=\"The yellow jersey favourites may regret not dropping Sarah Gigante\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                        <a class=\"article__category\" href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/tour-de-france-femmes\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tour de France Femmes<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"article__sub-title\">Missed opportunities on Friday could cost the main Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift contenders big time come Saturday&#8217;s Col de la Madeleine finish.<\/p>\n<p>                                <img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Abby Mickey\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"author__photo lazy \" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Abby-Mickey-150x150.jpg\" width=\"99\" height=\"99\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Cor Vos<\/p>\n<p>Four seconds. The 2025 Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift came down to four seconds. Going into that final stage in August, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney led the general classification by 27 seconds over Puck Pieterse, with her biggest rival, and the rider she took the jersey from on stage 5, Demi Vollering, 1:15 behind. <\/p>\n<p>After a gruelling day in the saddle that included 3,015 vertical meters, Niewiadoma-Phinney lost one minute and 11 seconds to Vollering. She won the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift by four seconds. <\/p>\n<p>The outcome of the 2024 Tour de France Femmes is one of the reasons that Kim Le Court-Pienaar (AG Insurance-Soudal) has been actively hunting bonus seconds along the course. In doing so, she&#8217;s built up a lead of 26 seconds to second-placed Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot of Visma-Lease a Bike going into the queen stage on Saturday. But what good will that do? Niewiadoma-Phinney said herself that after the Col de la Madeleine minutes will separate the favourites. <\/p>\n<p>Throughout the first six stages, Le Court-Pienaar took every opportunity she could to gain the minor advantage she has now. Some call it ridiculous, and perhaps it is. Le Court-Pienaar paid for her minor accelerations on the seventh stage when she was distanced from the other favourites on the Col du Granier, a Cat 2 ascent that is nothing compared to the climbs awaiting her on Saturday. <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"kg-bookmark-container\" href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/calm-among-the-chaos-scenes-from-ag-insurance-soudals-amazing-gc-defence\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>Calm among the chaos: Scenes from AG Insurance-Soudal\u2019s amazing GC defence<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s how it played out after Kim Le Court-Pienaar\u2019s spirited defence of yellow.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754111233_888_CORVOS_00038216-075.jpg\" alt=\"\" onerror=\"this.style.display = 'none'\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The real missed opportunity, and one that may return to haunt the big names come Saturday evening, was not distancing Le Court-Pienaar&#8217;s teammate Sarah Gigante on the final descent into Chamb\u00e9ry. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think they&#8217;ve missed a couple of opportunities,&#8221; Gigante joked after the seventh stage. &#8220;They could have got rid of me yesterday, maybe Kim today. We&#8217;ll see what happens, but from our point of view, hopefully they live to regret it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>            This post is for paying subscribers only<br \/>\n            <a class=\"gh-btn\" data-portal=\"signup\" href=\"#\/portal\/signup\" style=\"color:#FF6F42\">Subscribe now<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Already have an account? <a data-portal=\"signin\" href=\"#\/portal\/signin\">Sign in<\/a><\/p>\n<p>                Did we do a good job with this story?<\/p>\n<p class=\"reactions\" data-post-id=\"688d0c49baaa006a9e0c9d08\">\n                    \ud83d\udc4dYep<br \/>\n                    \ud83d\udc4eNope\n                <\/p>\n<p class=\"tags\">\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/tour-de-france-femmes\/\" title=\"Tour de France Femmes\" class=\"tag tag-67a677ae0c7ad49bf4f295a7 tour-de-france-femmes\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Tour de France Femmes<\/a><br \/>\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/news-and-racing\/\" title=\"News &amp; Racing\" class=\"tag tag-67a677ae0c7ad49bf4f293b3 news-and-racing\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">News &amp; Racing<\/a><br \/>\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/womens-cycling\/\" title=\"women&#039;s cycling\" class=\"tag tag-67a677ae0c7ad49bf4f29644 womens-cycling\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">women&#8217;s cycling<\/a><br \/>\n                        <a href=\"https:\/\/escapecollective.com\/tag\/sarah-gigante\/\" title=\"Sarah Gigante\" class=\"tag tag-67a677ae0c7ad49bf4f294cf sarah-gigante\" rel=\"tag noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sarah Gigante<\/a>\n                <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tour de France Femmes Missed opportunities on Friday could cost the main Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311092,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4104],"tags":[4230,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-311091","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-cycling","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114957441348065601","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311091","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=311091"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/311091\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/311092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=311091"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=311091"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=311091"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}