Marianne Vos came into the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift wanting to win a stage. As it stands, that’s not going to happen, but she may go home with another prize.
This year’s route held several opportunities. The first two stages ended in bunch sprints where she finished fifth and third – respectable results as she’s not necessarily a “bunch sprint” style sprinter anymore. It was the middle brace of stages with punchier climbs that she most targeted.
This year Vos has returned to some of her old tricks and really stepped up her climbing, and on stage 6 she came as close as you can to a win without getting it: spending 70 km in the day’s main break and then hanging tough to lead home the reduced pack after the break was caught and eventual stage winner Cedrine Kerbaol made her late escape. While a stage win is no longer in play, Vos’ consistency and versatility just might win her the green jersey.
Vos has history with the Tour even though this is just its third year. In the inaugural edition, she just missed out on the first stage when Lorena Wiebes took the yellow jersey from her on the Champs Élysées, but rebounded to win the second stage out of an elite group and take the overall lead. She wore yellow for five stages – including another victory on stage 5 – before eventual winner Annemiek van Vleuten relieved her of it, but she finished the race with the best jersey colour a sprinter can hope for: green.
That 2022 season was a good one for Vos, with wins at the cyclocross World Championships, two stages of the Giro d’Italia, and four out of six stages of the Tour of Scandinavia. The following year? Not so much.
She had a strong Vuelta a España Femenina, with three stage wins and the Points Classification, but walked away from the Giro with no stages to her name, a first since 2006. Over the offseason, Vos underwent surgery for iliac artery endofibrosis, a painful condition that can rob a rider of power. She’s dealt with it repeatedly; this surgery was the third of her career. She returned to the peloton in February for Setmana Ciclista Valenciana after skipping the cyclocross season and came into the Classics flying. She won Omloop het Nieuwsblad, Dwars door Vlaanderen and the Amstel Gold Race before winning two stages of the Vuelta.
From there Vos turned her attention to the two biggest goals of the year: the Olympic road race and the Tour. She worked on her climbing, because of the course in Paris, and the work paid off when she won the queen stage of the Volta Ciclista Catalunya. Watching her ride to solo victory atop a climb, it was like jumping in a time machine and punching in “Italy, Giro Rosa, 2011”, the year she won five stages and the pink jersey.
In the end, the Olympics would only deliver a silver to the 2012 gold medalist, but the form was there. And just in time. She came to the Tour with the legs but so did Charlotte Kool and Lorena Wiebes. Vos just needed to be patient.
Already in the first stage, she was quietly gathering points. Despite finishing fifth, she had enough points to sit second in the ranking and gathered more on stage 2. In stage 4, where Demi Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma started their GC fight, Vos silently picked up 15 more points. By the end of the day, Kool had 120 points, but Vos was the second-best with 76.
It was the fifth stage where Vos’ hard work started to pay off. Kool struggled with the hills, the lack of sleep, and the excitement of winning two stages. Vos kept chipping away and pulled the gap to 120-95. Then on Friday, she made her move, jumping in the break, going all out for the points and then, after a ton of furious chasing, finishing second on the stage. Post-stage, the tally was Vos at 145 to Kool’s 120.
This stage would have been too hard for the 2023 version of Vos, maybe even the 2022 vintage. The peloton has changed significantly since Vos won her last Giro in 2014. These days, Vos is better suited to the Classics and stage-race sprints. But on Friday, the old Vos came to play. She was ferocious, chasing every time she was dropped. And when the finish line was in sight she took the points easily.
On Friday evening she pulled on the green jersey, and with two stages remaining it’s hers to lose. Kool, already having a hard time with the stages 5 and 6 climbs, will have her work cut out for her even getting to the only intermediate sprint of the seventh stage. She would have to make it over a 12 km Cat 1 and a 2.4 km Cat 4 first to be in position to contest it.
Even Vos might struggle to get over both of those climbs, but if any sprinter can it’s the Dutchwoman. Plus, Visma-Lease a Bike, who came in hoping to finish high on the general classification with Riejanne Markus, is currently out of the GC fight entirely; Vos is their best rider, in 15th. Absent a Markus raid in the mountains, the only thing within their reach is the green jersey.
Like Kool, Wiebes will probably not make it to those intermediate points. She is currently 66 points down on her countrywoman in third. Niewiadoma is fourth, but the green jersey is of little concern to her. And even if she took the intermediate points, it wouldn’t be enough to catch Vos.
Come Sunday, Vos could be packing a green jersey in her luggage to take home, the second of her career. In the end, she didn’t even need to win a stage to come away with a top prize. Will that be of any consolation? Probably not. She wanted a stage, and she did not get one. But a Tour de France Femmes green jersey is a pretty good Band-Aid.
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