{"id":312575,"date":"2025-08-02T18:32:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T18:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312575\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T18:32:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T18:32:09","slug":"tour-de-france-femmes-ferrand-prevot-closes-on-home-glory-after-dazzling-win-tour-de-france-femmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/312575\/","title":{"rendered":"Tour de France Femmes: Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot closes on home glory after dazzling win | Tour de France Femmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, the Olympic mountain bike gold medallist at Paris 2024, took a commanding overall lead in the Tour de France Femmes<\/a> after a spectacular lone victory at the summit of the Col de la Madeleine.<\/p>\n

With one stage remaining in the nine-day race, the 33-year-old from Reims is on the verge of ending French cycling\u2019s 40 years wait by ending the long wait for a successor to Bernard Hinault\u2019s 1985 win in the men\u2019s Tour de France.<\/p>\n

Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, unlike many of those watching at the roadside, held back the tears until after an embrace from the Tour director, Marion Rousse. \u201cI\u2019ve realised a little girl\u2019s dream, it\u2019s a perfect day,\u201d Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot said after taking the yellow jersey. \u201cI have to thank the public and my family who were here at the roadside.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her solo success on the Tour\u2019s queen stage went beyond the host country\u2019s highest expectations and crushed the hopes of the defending champion, Kasia Niewiadoma–<\/strong>Phinney, as well as the 2023 champion, Demi Vollering, who were left behind on the long climb to the 2,000m Haute-Savoie mountain top.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a big effort for over an hour, hour and a half of climbing, and I had to manage it,\u201d Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot said. \u201cBut it\u2019s really been a team effort all week and it\u2019s as much for them as it is for me.\u201d For a Visma-Lease a Bike team who were once again dominated by Tadej Pogacar in the men\u2019s Tour de France, it was a sweet success.<\/p>\n

With just the final stage, from Praz-sur-Arly to Ch\u00e2tel, remaining, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot leads the Australian climber Sarah Gigante by more than two and a half minutes and Vollering by three minutes and 18 seconds. Niewiadoma–<\/strong>Phinney is a further half-minute behind.<\/p>\n

Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot said: \u201cI\u2019ve still got to finish the job, but one year after the Games in Paris, to win here, on this mythic climb, it\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The sense the race had been unsettled before the summit finishes was emphasised by the stop-start racing on the approach to the beyond category summit finish on the Madeleine, where the fight for the yellow jersey finally began. The pivotal moment came 12km from the summit when Gigante pulled clear of the favourites, with Pauliena Rooijakkers and Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot in pursuit.<\/p>\n

Gigante, teammate to the overnight race leader, Kim Le Court, has struggled to keep pace on the descents, but her rapid climbing has compensated for that shortcoming. This time, though, Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot was quick to respond to her sharp acceleration and the pair soon joined forces.<\/p>\n

The French rider also benefited from her Visma-Lease a Bike team\u2019s tactics. Marion Bunol went in the early break, waiting ahead to pace her teammate up the climb. That gave her the respite she needed, before she dropped her final companion, Niamh Fisher-Black, five kilometres from the finish.<\/p>\n

Le Court, Niewiadoma–<\/strong>Phinney and Vollering had little or no meaningful response so Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s climbing speed. It was a tough day for Le Court. The descending speed that had saved her overall lead on the previous stage to Chamb\u00e9ry let her down 24 hours later, when she raced too fast into a tight left-hand bend and somersaulted into a ditch.<\/p>\n

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None of her rivals waited for the race leader as she got to her feet and remounted. If anything the peloton of favourites pushed on even harder as Le Court dropped almost a minute behind.<\/p>\n

However, in the valley road leading to the next climb, the C\u00f4te de Saint-Georges d\u2019Hurti\u00e8res, the peloton slowed and Le Court rejoined the main group. After that, she led the way at the foot of the Madeleine, hoping to set up Gigante.<\/p>\n

Her efforts were not in vain, but she and Gigante had not factored in Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot\u2019s extended climbing powers. \u201cOther teams don\u2019t know what\u2019s coming,\u201d Le Court had said of Gigante\u2019s climbing skills. But they had reckoned without Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot.<\/p>\n

Now drawing huge crowds to the roadside and growing TV audiences, the fourth edition of the Tour Femmes, has built further on the success of the first three. \u201cI really felt something big was happening,\u201d Rousse said. \u201cI had tears in my eyes. I was a little overwhelmed because women\u2019s cycling has come so far.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rousse also revealed that Christian Prudhomme, director of the men\u2019s Tour, had said to her: \u201cI no longer see any difference between the two Tours de France.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, the Olympic mountain bike gold medallist at Paris 2024, took a commanding overall lead in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":312576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2000,299,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-312575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-france"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114960606322332380","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312575","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=312575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/312575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/312576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=312575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=312575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=312575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}