Le Tour Femmes Dispatch: Stages 2 & 3

All images: Justin Britton

For a day that featured just over 75km of racing, with two diminutive stages packed in on day two in the Netherlands, it turned out to be a very long day in the end, for all involved.

Starting bright and early with a regular, albeit teeny tiny, road stage, the riders and fans had just 3? Hours to rehydrate, refuel and switch to their aero gear before taking on the second of the day’s double bill, a short prologue-style time trial.

It was a day of delight for the Dutch – perhaps not all that surprising in any women’s bike race, given the proportion of the peloton that the Netherlands natives comprise – but once again, the names that came out on top were for different reasons perhaps not the names we would have expected. Either way, home advantage has very much played its part over these first two stages, and with tomorrow’s Amstel Gold-inspired stage start, it could be another great day for the low countries, though if we follow that logic, it will be a Belgian who takes glory in Liege. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We have two whole stage to recap in today’s Dispatch – neither of which should take all that long.

Stage 2: in review

Another hot day in the Netherlands, the riders headed out of Rotterdam, only ro ride right back into it. Just a couple of hours of racing on the clock, and they were a costly couple of hours for many riders caught up in a number of crashes, most of which seemed to be mercifully non-serious, though many were caught out, with a difficult parcours, with narrow roads and road furniture causing bottlenecks and issues for a peloton travelling at very high speeds.

With the profile flatter than the proverbial pancake and so little distance during which to make an impact, a breakaway was always going to have a hard time making a go of anything, and it was a fair way into the race before Lotto-Dstny’s Audrey de Keersmaeker clipped off for a solo jaunt up the road, for which she was later rewarded with the most combative rider prize, and rightly so.

There’s really nothing else to be said about this stage, other than it somehow feels like a bit of a wasted opportunity, as nothing much happened aside from a fair bit of a chaos, and heading into the final, Liv AlUla-Jayco were struck by a crash that unfortunately looked pretty costly, with both Ruby Roseman-Gannon and Amber Pate coming down hard. Both of them were able to complete the stage and rode stage 3 later that day, so here's hoping it looked worse than it was.

In the end, it came down to a second sprint in as many days, and this time there were no mechanicals, it was a fair fight between Lorena Wiebes and Charlotte Kool, and Kool took her second stage victory, powering past her countrywoman, who launched her sprint early and didn’t have quite enough to stay ahead across the line. A victory in yellow for Kool, who has finally found winning form after a year in which she’s suffered with breathing issues, and what a time to hit a winning streak.

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And finally...

When you're all yellow, you have to sing about it, right? Love the camaraderie on the Team dsm-firmenich PostNL bus!

5 Minutes with...

by Anna McEwen

Stage 3: in review

Part two of the day of two halves, a short individual time trial that would favour powerful rouleurs, sprinters and flat time-trial specialists took the riders around Rotterdam one last time. It’s a city they will have grown very familiar with over the past few days, and the fans were once again on hand to give them a boost as they swapped road bikes for time trial bikes (in some cases) and donned the aero helmets and skin suits, for just under eight minutes against the clock.

It was FDJ-SUEZ’s Loes Adegeest who set the early time to beat, and she held onto her place in the hot seat for longer than many would have predicted, as rider after rider failed to better her time. Many people’s favourite for the stage, Olympic time trial champion Grace Brown, came into difficulty, suffering a mechanical and forced to stop for a wheel change, putting her out of contention, as she missed out on the opportunity to add to her Olympic gold medal with a Tour de France Femmes stage victory in her final appearance at the race.

Twice a former world champion and former Hour Record holder Ellen van Dijk was clearly up for it, throwing herself at the stage and squeezing every bit of effort out to try and chase away the disappointment she suffered at the Olympics. She missed out on the lead by the narrowest of margins, just 1.36 seconds, which was then shaved almost in half by another Olympic champion, Kristen Faulkner, who missed the time of Adegeest by just 0.77 of a second. Her team pursuit teammate and reigning ITT world champion Chloe Dygert was the one who finally unseated Adegeest, sneaking her nose into the lead by the finest of margins, just 0.17 seconds, and many expected her to remain in the seat for the rest of the afternoon, with just a handful of riders still to come.

Until Demi Vollering. The defending champion pulled off the surprise of the day, smashing Dygert’s time by over five seconds, a relative gulf comparatively speaking, given the tiny margins we’d up seen to that point, and though perhaps it shouldn’t have been all that surprising given that it’s Demi Vollering, for goodness’ sake, but despite her relative prowess in the discipline, it’s not a parcours that anyone felt would favour her so much, beforehand. She took the lead, and held onto it – with all the sprinters still to come, there remained a question over whether any of them could come close to the time of the 2023 champion. The ride of the day, arguably, came from Ceratizit-WNT’s Cedrine Kerbaol. The winner of the white jersey in 2023, the Frenchwoman went all out in her effort and finished an impressive fourth place on the stage, and will really cause the rest of the riders to take notice of her as a genuine GC candidate.

After the race Vollering admitted that she was taking control of the yellow jersey earlier than she was expecting, and ahead of the team plan, speaking to their confidence and also begging the question – can she hold onto the maillot jaune all the way to the summit of Alpe d’Huez? The golden girl of the first two stages, Charlotte Kool, moved into the green jersey, and will aim to hang onto it until the end. There was no change in either of the other jersey competitions, with Anniina Ahtosahlo retaining the white youth jersey, and Cristina Tonetti the QOM polka dots.

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PREVIEW: Stage 4 – Wednesday 14^th August – Valkenburg – Liège (122.7km, Hilly)

On day three, stage 4 will see the race bid farewell to the Netherlands, and after two sprints and a TT, the non-sprinty, non-TT types (basically most of the peloton) are going to be chomping at the bit to go racing. And they have the perfect course to do just that. With eight categorised climbs, and a hybrid Ardennes Classics homage that features part of the Amstel Gold Race course at the beginning and some of the iconic climbs of Liege-Bastogne-Liege once they’ve crossed the border into Belgium, it will be a feisty, up-and-down rollercoaster in which anything could happen.

Look out for the names of familiar ascents – the Bemelberg, Cauberg and Geulhemmerberg on a circuit inspired by the Amstel Gold Race, in the first part of the profile, before the names become distinctly more French, with the Côte de la Redoute, Côte des Forges and Côte de la Roche aux Faucons in the Wallonia region of Belgium. There are also bonus seconds on the GC available just 11km from the line, so it will be a spicy one, mark my words.

Here is Melanie During from Geo-Sports to take you deep inside the rock of the Ardennes...