The first of two mountain stages to finish the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift was an opportunity for the breakaway that was seized by AG Insurance-Soudal rider Justine Ghekiere, who crossed the line victorious in the iconic polka-dot jersey of Queen of the Mountains.
The GC contest was relatively quiet in the end with the threat of Alpe d’Huez looming up ahead on stage 8. Unsurprisingly, race leader Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) and defending Tour champion Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime) were near inseparable, especially where attacks flew on the final climb. Vollering was however able to snatch back four bonus seconds with third on the stage, which also saw the SD Worx leader climb the overall standings to eighth, now 1:15 down on Niewiadoma with one stage to go.
Best-young-rider Puck Pieterse (Fenix-Deceuninck) was also brilliant all day, taking the first QOM sprint and sticking with the favourites on the final climb, ending the day in second overall just 27 seconds off the yellow jersey.
- At 166.4 km, stage 7 was the longest stage of the race, and incorporated almost 3,000 metres of elevation gain, including the first Cat.1 climb of the week, the 12-kilometre Col de la Croix de la Serra only 46 km into the stage.
- There were attacks from the gun as riders sought to get a head start on the major climbs, but it wasn’t until the foot of the long descent off the Col de la Croix de la Serra that a group of six eventually slipped away with just over half the stage remaining: Julie van de Velde (AG Insurance-Soudal), Sara Martín (Movistar), Sarah Roy (Cofidis), Ruth Edwards (Human Powered Health), and serial attackers QOM leader Justine Ghekiere (AG Insurance-Soudal) and green-jersey Marianne Vos (Visma-Lease a Bike), both in the breakaway for the second consecutive day and both hunting down points to consolidate their classification leads.
- Vos started the penultimate stage with a 25-point lead over double-stage winner Charlotte Kool (DSM-firmenich PostNL) having relieved her compatriot of green on stage 6, but with victory at the intermediate sprint and Kool’s abandon on the Col de la Croix de la Serra, Vos put her lead out of reach, ending the day with double the points of next-best Lorena Wiebes (SD Worx-Protime).
- The mountains classification, on the other hand, remains rather closer with the queen stage still to come. Ghekiere’s afternoon in the break meant she was able to increase her initially narrow lead over stage 4-winner Puck Pieterse, put under significant duress as her rival snatched maximum points on the lucrative Cat.1 summit early in the stage. Ghekiere did everything she could to end the stage with 41 points to Pieterse’s 25, but with a maximum of 35 points available on Sunday, including 15 on the Alpe d’Huez summit finish, it’s not over yet.
- The break’s advantage stretched to over five minutes as the GC teams in the peloton composed themselves for the run-in, steadily beginning to chip away once inside the last 50 km.
- The final act began about 16 km from the line as the break hit the first of two Cat.2 climbs to finish the stage. Julie van de Velde did one last massive pull for her polka-dot teammate Ghekiere, jettisoning first Roy, then Edwards, with the peloton chasing about three minutes behind.
- Van de Velde pulled the pin 13.5 km from the line, leaving Ghekiere to attack the remains of the break and hunt down maximum mountains points, and a possible stage win.
- Ghekiere had put almost a minute into Vos and Martin in the three kilometres running up to the Cat.2 sprint, at which point the peloton was still 2:36 down. With another five points added to her tally, the Belgian showed no sign of letting up as she climbed into the last 10 km of the stage.
- In the peloton, Grace Brown did an extraordinary pull for FDJ-Suez teammate Évita Muzic until the probing attacks began.
- Demi Vollering initiated the accelerations among the GC contenders just inside 7 km to go, but she was carefully marked by race leader Niewiadoma, who continued to do the work to neutralise the moves in the last few kilometres as Pauliena Rooijakkers (Fenix-Deceuninck) and Gaia Realini (Lidl-Trek) joined the SD Worx duo of Vollering and Niamh Fisher-Black in trading blows off the front.
- The repeated accelerating and then easing off in the peloton left Ghekiere’s lead very much intact as she climbed to the finish, only Maëva Squiban (Arkéa-B&B Hotels) allowed to escape from the bunch and take some leftovers on the line.
- Having done a lot if not most of the work in the group, Niewiadoma put in her own acceleration under the flamme rouge and this time a gap was created with only Vollering able to latch on – Pieterse only now showed signs of fatigue having matched the favourites further down the climb and left others to do the work.
- With a small gap established, there was a bit of cat and mouse between the rivals in the last few hundred metres, but Vollering had the last word, accelerating and putting a few bike lengths into the yellow jersey on her way to the line, where she took the remaining bonus seconds with third place.
Stage Top 10
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GC Top 10 after stage 7
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Quote of the day
When I took the last points [on the Col de Saint-Jean-de-Sixt], I was really dead and I thought, ‘yeah, I just go my own pace’. And I could stay away, I can’t believe it, I really can’t believe it. I’m really looking forward to riding the last stage of this Tour in this skinsuit and with a win already, it’s just a dream.”
Ghekiere said at the finish after paying tribute to her team, especially Julie van de Velde.
Brief analysis:
- Puck Pieterse continues to impress in her first-ever stage race, pedalling ever further into relatively unfamiliar territory for the multi-hyphenate rider. At the start of stage 7, the 22-year-old was sitting fourth overall just 22 seconds off the lead having now committed herself to a GC focus after securing an early stage win. At the finish line, she’d lost five seconds, but jumped up to second overall and remains the outright leader of the young rider classification. In short, she passed her first mountain test with flying colours, the first to crest the Cat.1 Col de la Croix de la Serra, and then sensibly following the key wheels of Niewiadoma and Vollering in the closing kilometres rather than attempting her own acceleration, which might have come more naturally to the characteristically aggressive rider.
- In the end, the GC race as a whole might be considered to have stalled slightly, however, with gradients averaging around 5%, it wasn’t really the sort of finale that was conducive to big moves – and the tough first-category climb was way too far out to factor as more than a cause of fatigue. What’s more, the threat of stage 8 summit finish on Alpe d’Huez, not to mention the mid-stage hors-catégorie Col du Glandon, loomed large over the penultimate day of the race.
Up next
The 2024 Tour de France avec Zwift takes its bow on the 21 iconic hairpins of the Alpe d’Huez, the second of two HC climbs on the 150-kilometre final stage from Le Grand-Bornand. Stage 8 has a relatively sedate start, at least compared to the rest of the stage, with just the Cat.2 Col de Tamie interrupting the parcours in the first 70-odd kilometres. From there on, it’s straight up the nasty Col du Glandon (19.9 km at 7.2%; last 8 km at 8.8%) which will punish a lot of legs in the peloton, then it’s down the lumpy descent and into the valley to Le Bourg d’Oisans and the start of the infamous Alpe (14km at 7.9%).
After seven stages, the top 10 on GC are all within 90 seconds of Niewiadoma’s yellow jersey. Defending champion Vollering is unusually low down in eighth and will seek revenge on the world after her unfortunate stage 5 crash, but with so many others within punching distance of a career-making result, including French national champion Juliette Labous and FDJ-Suez leader Évita Muzic, it’s sure to be a thrilling finale in the Alps.
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