Julie Van de Velde: As well as taking today’s combativity award, the Belgian has taken possession of the polka-dot jersey for Queen of the Mountains which was being worn by her teammate Yara Kastelijn. It might seem unkind but the word on the boulevard is that it was a planned team tactic.
The top five on General Classification
Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) 11hr 07min 19sec
Liane Lippert (Movistar) +55sec
Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (AG Soudal-Quickstep) +1min 05sec
Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Canyon//Sram) +1min 05sec
Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) +1min 05sec
Lorena Wiebes wins. Having left DSM-Firmenich to do most of the donkey work at the front of the bunch in the second half of the stage, the riders of SD Worx eventually got their act together with about four kilometres to go and timed their lead out to perfection, possibly more by accident than by design.
Spare a thought for Julie Van de Velde, whose heroic solo effort earned her the combativity award but wasn’t quite enough to win her the stage. It was a terrific effort but she came up just a little short.
The top five in stage three
1. Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx)
2. Marianne Vos (Jumbo Visma)
3. Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx)
4. Chiara Consonni (UAE Team ADQ)
5. Elisa Balsamo (Lidl-Trek)
Lorena Wiebes wins stage three!
It’s agonising heartbreak for Julie Van de Velde, who gets swallowed up with about 150 metres to go. Lorena Wiebes wins the stage for SD Worx in a sprint.
1km to go: The peloton have Van de Velde in their sights with the gap down to 10 seconds as the leader passes through the flamme rouge. C’mon Julie!
2km to go: In very unsurprising news, Julie Van de Velde has been awarded today’s combativity prize, so even if she doesn’t win the stage, at least she won’t be going back to her hotel room empty handed. Her lead is at 20 seconds with two kilometres remaining. She could do this …
3km to go: Julie Van de Velde maintains her lead of 36 seconds with the massed ranks of the peloton failing to put a dent in her lead over the past kilometre. This is an absolutely heroic effort from the Belgian time-trialist, who must be in a world of pain. Team DSM are still on the front of the bunch but they’re not doing enough.
5km to go: Ooh! The gap goes back out to 35 seconds. This could be very, very tight!
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7km to go: The gap is 28 seconds as DSM Firmenich move back to the front of the peloton in a bid to reel in the leader. It’s been a fine effort from Julie Van de Velde out in front but it’s difficult to see her hanging on. Back in the bunch, a couple of her teammates are trying to disrupt proceedings at the front of the bunch, hoping to slow things down by a second or two here and there.
9km to go: Jumbo-Visma are front and centre of the bunch with the legendary Marianne Vos riding on third wheel.
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10km to go: Riding in support of their sprinter Charlotte Kool, DSM-Firmenich are towing the bunch along at a rate of knots as they pass the 10-kilometre kite. A couple of carelessly discarded rogue bidons lying in the middle of the road are studiously avoided at towards the back of the bunch.
13km to go: Boasting the race number 117 on her lower back, Van de Velde travels onwards, her lead being reduced with each turn of the pedals in the bunch behind her. It’s currently 33 seconds.
16km to go: Van de Velde’s lead is reduced to 45 seconds but she is on something of an ascent while the peloton behind her are going downhill. It’s not looking great for the Belgin Fenix-Deceuninck rider as the teams in the bunch start getting their ducks in a row ahead of the sprint finish they’re planning.
Intermediate sprint result
1. Julie Van de Velde (Fenix-Deceuninck) 25 pts
2. Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) 20
3. Ashleigh Moolman Pasio (Soudal Quick-Step) 17
4. Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) 15
5. Anna Henderson (Jumbo Visma) 13
6. Mischa Bredewold (SD Worx) 11
7. Julia Borgström (Soudal Quick-Step) 10
8. Elise Chabbey (Canyon//Sram) 9
9. Mavi Garcia (Liv Racing Teqfind) 8
10. Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon//Sram) 7
11. Kerlijn Swinkels (Jumbo Visma) 6
12. Silke Smulders (Liv Racing Teqfind) 5
13. Sarah Roy (Canyon//Sram) 4
14. Marianne Vos (Jumbo Visma) 3
15. Riejanne Markus (Jumbo Visma) 2
21km to go: The riders of Canyon-SRAM move to the front of the bunch alongside their counterparts from Lidl-Trek. The gap between the bunch and the Belgian stage leader is 1min 13sec.
24km to go: Lorena Wiebes is second over the line at the intermediate sprint, followed by Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio and Lotte Kopecky in third and fourth.
26km to go: The riders of DSM-Firmenich take up the cudgels and start dragging the peloton along and the gap quickly comes down to 1min 52sec, with the intermediate sprint looming. Julie Van de Velde is first under the green banner to take maximum points.
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28km to go: Van de Velde’s lead is getting bigger, rather than smaller as we approach the business end of the stage. It’s out to 2min 18sec.
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30km to go: There’s been a crash, with Elena Cecchini (SD Worx) and Coryn Labecki (Jumbo Visma) appearing to touch wheels before going down. Both are back on their bikes and pedalling back towards the bunch but Labecki looks uncomfortable.
34km to go: Julie Van de Velde’s lead goes out to 2min 04sec. Will she nick the stage from the sprinters? Probably not but she’s giving herself every opportunity.
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36km to go: The peloton passes a field in which a herd of completely disinterested Charolais cattle are standing and sitting around chewing their cud. Moo!
That’s the kind of peerless bovine insight you just don’t get from Tour live-bloggers who didn’t spend their formative years traipsing around farmyards in the midlands of Ireland, opening and closing gates, while helping their father the vet to conduct TB tests on cattle.
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38km to go: Julie Van de Velde continues her solo voyage as one of the two Fenix-Deceuninck cars working in support of her and her teammates tries to make its way through the peloton hugging the left-hand side of the fairly narrow road. The driver isn’t being given an inch by riders eager to keep their position and parps his horn furiously. Eventually, he makes his way through. The gap is 1min 48sec.
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44km to go: A good time-trialist, Julie Van de Velde remains in front with a lead of 1min 17sec after launching her well timed attack and is currently travelling along at 40km per hour on her solo breakaway.
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50km to go: Today’s intermediate sprint takes place 25.8 km from the finish. Race leader Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) is the current holder of the green jersey for the points classification but as she is also the maillot jaiune, Ashleigh Moolman Pasio is in green today by dint of being second on points.
54km to go: Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon–SRAM) launches an attack off the front of the pack. The Polish rider is quickly caught and Julie Van de Velde remains out in front, hoovering up Queen of the Mountain points to prevent anyone else snaffling the polka-dot jersey from her teammate Yara Castelijn. The gap is just 22 seconds.
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55km to go: Julie Van de Velde crests the final summit of the day, Anouska Koster leads the bunch up the climb but is beaten to the remaining point by the Austrian Christina Schweinberger. The gap is just 12 seconds.
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56km to go: Julia Van de Velde leads the bunch by 33 seconds as the maillot jaune sits second in the peloton as they move on to the Côte de Saint-Robert, the final categorised climb of the day. There’s another stiffish uphill for everyone to negotiate just before the stage levels out for the sprint finish.
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57km to go: Julie Van de Velde is first over the top and takes two Queen of the Mountains points. The Dutch rider Anouska Koster beats Yara Kastelijn to the remaining point.
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60km to go: Currently wearing the polka-dot jersey, Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck) moves to the front of the bunch as they head up the first of two back-to-back climbs. Julie Van De Velde (Jumbo-Visma) attacks off the front and opens a gap of 17 seconds in one kilometre.
62km to go: Elizabeth Stannard (Zaaf) has suffered a mechanical and is trying to get back to the bunch as they approach the penultimate climb of the day, the Côtes des Andrieux. It’s 58km from the finish, 248m high and 2.6km in length. The average gradient is 4.1%.
68km to go: Today’s average speed? A fairly respectable 36.3km per hour so far.
70km to go: The bunch rolls through a designated waste disposal zone, with no end of riders chucking assorted bidons, wrappers and other detritus they might have about their persons towards the grass margins. Anything left behind by souvenir-hunting scavengers will be collected by the Tour organisers and disposed of appropriately so the countryside isn’t needlessly littered.
74km to go: We’re treated to one attack after another off the front of the bunch, with the riders of Lidl-Trek doing a lot of policing when it comes to closing them down. Nobody is being allowed to escape and Lidl-Trek will be hoping to keep things contained so they can lead their Italian rider Elisa Balsamo to a sprint finish.
77km to go: Alice Marie Arzuffi (Ceratizit) attacks off the front of the bunch but is unable to escape.
79km to go: WIth the stage shaping up to end in a sprint finish, the peloton is fairly tightly bunched. Race leader Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) is a conspicuous presence near the front in her yellow jersey.
82km to go: Kathrin Hammes has been caught by the bunch following her solo effort. The German earned herself seven QoM points during her breakaway but as things stand they won’t be enough to put her in the polka-dot jersey. Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck), who started today’s stage in the iconic garment, still leads the standings by a point.
Marianne Vos: The most successful woman in the sport spoke to Eurosport before today’s stage and was asked if she thought she might be in with a shout of winning today’s stage. “We want to be as offensive as possible,” said the Jumbo-Visma rider. “We want to try to make the race and we’ll see how that ends up. Hopefully we’ll be there with numbers to play the game.”
86km to go: Coryn Labecki has been reeled in by the peloton after going over the top of the Côte de L’Escurotte. The gap from the bunch to Hammes is down to 35 seconds.
88km to go: Not for the first time today, Jumbo-Visma’s Coryn Labecki has attacked off the front of the bunch and this time she has been reasonable successful in getting away. The American is 1min 04sec behind Hammes, with the bunch a further 35 seconds back.
97km to go: The next climb is the category four Côte de L’Escurotte, located 89 kilometres from the finish line. It’s 391m high and 2.6km in length, with an average gradient of 4.7%.
103km to go: Kathrin Hammes remains out in front and her lead is out to 1min 10sec. She’s averaged a little over one kilometre an hour over the peloton in the opening 40 kilometres but is being kept on a fairly tight rein.
109km to go: The opening stages of this year’s Tour de France Femmes are proving more attritional than those in the men’s race and by close of play yesterday we’d already lost five riders.
This morning, Cofidis rider Spela Kern didn’t sign on at the start after suffering a thumb injury in a crash yesterday, while Uno-X rider Marte Berg Edseth abandoned not long after today’s start.
Lucie Jounier, who began the day as Lanterne Rouge after suffering from abdominal issues, was dropped on today’s first climb, and has also quit the race.
110km to go: As we join today’s stage, the riders have already put almost 40 kilometres of road behind them and Kathrin Hammes (EF Education-Tibco-SVB) has launched a lone breakaway. The German was first over the opening two climbs, picking up four Queen of the Mountains points in the process. Hammes has a lead of one minute over the chasing peloton.
"Patience and poise will be needed in the finale"... @spannawalker takes us through the 147.2km stage from Collonges-La-Rouge. The final 10km into Montignac-Lascaux will be fast! 💨 #TDFF2023 #TDFFdata pic.twitter.com/OZbjzWn6e9
— letourdata (@letourdata) July 25, 2023
Who's in what jersey?
Yellow: Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx)
Green: Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx)
Polka-dot: Yara Kastelijn (Fenix-Deceuninck)
White: Cedrine Kerbaol (Ceratizit-WNT)
Updated
The top 10 on General Classification
Lotte Kopecky (SD Worx) 7hr 17min 36sec
Liane Lippert (Movistar) +49sec
Ashleigh Moolman-Pasio (AG Soudal-Quickstep) +59sec
Demi Vollering (SD Worx) + 59sec
Cecile Ludwig (FDJ-Suez) +59sec
Tamara Dronova (Israel Premier Tech Roland) +59sec
Elisa Longo Borghini (Lidl-Trek) +59sec
Annemiek van Vleuten (Movistar) +59sec
Katarzyna Niewiadoma (Canyon//Sram) +59sec
Ane Santesteban Gonzalez (Jayco ALUla) +1min 03sec
Lippert triumphs amid rain-induced 'chaos'
Stage two report: The game of cat and mouse between the two strongest teams in women’s racing gathered pace in the Tour de France Femmes as the race leader, Lotte Kopecky, of Team SD Worx, was outsprinted in Mauriac by the German rider Liane Lippert, of Movistar.
Stage three: Collonges-la-Rouge to Montignac-Lascaux (147km)
Despite the presence of five categorised climbs, mere speedbumps compared to some of the climbs the riders have tackled in the past two days, today’s stage is likely to be decided by the sprinters at the end of a route that begins in the picturesque village of Collonges-la-Rouge and takes in the Vézère valley in all its glory.
With no climbs to negotiate in the final 50 kilometres the speedsters and their teams will be going all out to rein in any breakaway so they can contest the finish between them on the long 650-metre straight to the line in Montignac-Lascaux.
Charlotte Kool (DSM-Firmenich) and Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx) are the obvious candidates to duke it out in such circumstances, although the wily campaigner Marianne Vos can never be ruled out.
