As Cofidis made their way to sign on for stage 6 of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift, one rider stood out from the rest. The birthday crown and golden glasses were hard to miss. Victoire Berteau, fresh off a call-up to race the Olympic road race and team pursuit for France, would go on to celebrate her 24th birthday with 17 “friends” off the front of the peloton.
After a brutal fifth stage, stage 6 could have gone a few different ways. A big break getting up the road was one of the possibilities. Sure enough, at the midway point of the day, a move formed containing 18 riders, with a few big names among them: Marianne Vos, Niamh Fisher-Black, Ellen van Dijk … and birthday girl Berteau.
“Ya, it was a really really good day,” Berteau said of her birthday break. “It was really nice to be in the breakaway. I was with my friend Audrey [Cordon-Ragot] and I heard so much ‘happy birthday’ on the road so it was fantastic.”
Of course, being at the Tour, it’s hard to properly celebrate. Berteau at least had her mom and girlfriend at the event to wish her a happy birthday, plus a special dinner made by the Cofidis team chef.
“The chef cooked some nice meat for me, so it was really nice and we had a little party together,” Berteau said. “The Tour is not finished so you can’t celebrate too much.”
Normally not a big fan of her birthday, Berteau spent her 24th at work, which sounds like it would be a drag, unless your job is a dream come true. Add on the fact the day at work was also in the most iconic race in cycling, and Berteau is French, and it all adds up to a great way to spend your birthday.
“Maybe it’s not so cool to say this but I don’t like my birthday, it’s not a special day for me,” Berteau explained. “But yesterday it was a really, really nice day. It was maybe the best birthday of my life. I shared it with my mom and my girlfriend so for me it was really, really nice.”
Given how popular it is now for teams to have a chef on staff, riders who spend their birthdays on Tour normally also get a pretty good cake, or dessert of their choice, to share with the team at the end of a hard day on the bike. Of course, given she’s on a French team, it wasn’t like Berteau was going to be served a funfetti cake with rainbow sprinkles.
“It was tiramisu and the tarte citron meringuée – it’s really French,” she said.
Berteau wasn’t the only Frenchwoman who was celebrating after stage 6. Her young compatriot, Cédrine Kerbaol, took a historic victory on the day, the first win for a French woman at the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift. And as for Berteau – her time at the front of the race ended on La Roche du Prêtre, as the break started to splinter with around 35 km to go. She’d end up rolling in around eight minutes down on Kerbaol, but still satisfied with a birthday well spent.
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