At the summit of the Col de la Madeleine, 2,000m in the sky, Demi Vollering tosses her bike across the finish line. The pre-race favourite has won a two-up sprint against Fenix-Deceuninck’s Yara Kastelijn. Breathless and exhausted, she bows her head over her handlebars. There will be no victory celebrations, though. The dash was for fourth place.
On the gantry above the two riders the clock ticks to three minutes and three seconds; it’s the time Pauline Ferrand-Prévot has had to toast her win on the Queen stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, and start to come to terms with the fact that she is now the yellow jersey. It’s also the time that Vollering has lost to her GC rival, a gap that will be difficult to overcome on the final day.
Many penned stage seven as the day Vollering would take flight, as she had done on the Col du Tourmalet two years prior. Instead, she found herself chasing, suffering on the slopes of the Alps.
“I just feel not really myself,” the FDJ-SUEZ leader said, swarmed by TV cameras beyond the finish line. “I just missed some power in the legs – my heart and lungs were ok, but my legs were just finished today.”
Over the first week of racing at the Tour – in spite of Vollering's day three crash – seconds separated her from her GC rivals. She went into stage eight just 31 seconds off the top step. The gaps have now blown out to minutes.
Ferrand-Prévot leads by 2:37 to AG Insurance-Soudal’s Sarah Gigante, who climbed six places with her move on the Madeleine. Vollering occupies the final podium spot, just 22 seconds ahead of last year’s winner Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM zondacrypto), but still 3:18 adrift of yellow.
What went wrong on the Madeleine? “Actually, I felt good in the beginning, but I just didn’t have an answer to Gigante’s attack,” Vollering said. “Normally I should be able to follow. I'm very disappointed in myself, of course, but it is how it is.”
Gigante’s attack came inside 12km to go. “I was definitely dreaming of winning this stage,” the Australian said afterwards, “but I’m happy with second.”
The move ripped the GC group apart, dragging Ferrand-Prévot with it, but distancing Vollering, who then had to close a small gap to Niewiadoma. For the rest of the stage, Vollering was forced to chase by herself – after all, who would pace the pre-race favourite? – but her engine could only get her so far.
“I rode flat out to the finish in the final kilometre,” she said. By that point, though, Ferrand-Prévot was already necking her recovery drinks. “I didn't have much left, but it was at least enough to drop Kasia. Maybe I can get a podium finish in the GC, but we'll see… At the moment, I'm pretty rotten. Let's recover first, then look at tomorrow.”
Stage nine, it’s certain, will be no procession. The road to Châtel is mountainous, with almost 3,000m of climbing before the race closes, and the yellow jersey is crowned.
The GC battle has finally opened up – there’s room yet for some last-minute changes. But, as Ferrand-Prévot’s celebrations at the summit of the Madeleine showed – the fist-pumping, the beaming smile, the tears of joy – the Frenchwoman knows her buffer is comfortable.
France should soon have its yellow jersey. Vollering may have to wait another year for hers.
