Kim Le Court made the classic error of raising her arms just before the finish line, but survived a late lunge from a resurgent Demi Vollering to win stage five of the Tour de France Femmes in Guéret.
The Mauritian rider is enjoying a stellar 2025, having already worn the yellow jersey after stage two, and also led the Tour of Britain and won the Belgian classic, Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Her stage win and bonus seconds took her back into the race lead, at the expense of Marianne Vos.
“The big goal was to take the bonus sprint,” Le Court said of her success in the Tour Femmes’ longest stage “which I managed to do. It was a bit tricky at the end. Maybe I gave a bit of a fright to people watching, but in the sprint when you lift your hands you should double-check. Close or not close, I still crossed the line first.”
Le Court, riding for AG Insurance-Soudal, admitted that her success in the bonus sprints could be pivotal. “We have seen a few tours that have been lost by a few seconds, so we are fighting for every second possible. Seconds are super-important and you just never know.”
Le Court and Vollering were part of a select group of race favourites, also including defending champion Kasia Niewiadoma, Olympic mountain biking champion, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, and former world road race champion, Anna van der Breggen, that moved ahead on the final climb into Guéret.
Three climbs in the final 35km shattered the peloton. On the first, the Cote de Chabannes, the trio of breakaway riders split apart, with Brodie Chapman, riding for UAE Team ADQ, the last to be caught.
The ferocious pace to the final climb, Le Maupuy, reduced the lead group even further, with Niewiadoma’s Canyon-Sram ZondaCrypto team leading the way, and finally getting some distance on the overnight leader, Vos.
The war of words between the Visma-Lease a Bike team of Vos and Ferrand-Prévot and that of FDJ-Suez race favourite Vollering had looked to be over after the team managers Jos van Emden and Stephen Delcourt shook hands in the team bus parking area before the stage start in Futuroscope.
After Vollering’s crash on Monday evening, Delcourt had rounded on her rivals saying: “The mentality of some teams is insane. Absolutely disrespectful. How is it possible that everyone wants to gamble with their lives?”
Van Emden’s reaction to Delcourt’s criticisms only fanned the flames. “I have absolutely no respect for those comments,” he said of Delcourt. “He apparently wants a peloton of eight riders, with Demi in it, to ride in a gilded cage. He’s simply been influenced by Demi, by Demi’s posturing.”
In Futuroscope, the pair came face to face, with Visma’s Jacco Verhaeren, the team’s sporting director, acting as moderator, for a 20-minute discussion. “It was really good, really constructive,” Delcourt said. “We share the same idea. We want safety for everybody.” The Frenchman added that he did not regret his original comments. “No, I don’t. We agreed to disagree.”
Any truce, however, might be short-lived. Only a few minutes prior to the conciliatory meeting, Delcourt, speaking to French media, had described Van Emden as “stupid, he only thinks of himself and has an over-sized ego”.
Vollering, meanwhile, appears focused on the race and is seemingly recovered from a crash which only 48 hours earlier had looked likely to force her to quit. Second place, in a ferocious finish, showed that her ambition and appetite remain intact.
Thursday’s sixth stage, from Clermont-Ferrand to Ambert, further ramps up the pressure with four climbs, including the first category Col du Béal in the second half of the stage. The rolling roads of the opening stages are now behind them as the peloton braces itself for a long and gruelling weekend in the mountains.
