There are instances in races where the leader in the race goes down and the right thing to do is slow down and wait for them to catch up, but 6.3 km remaining in the stage when the race is full gas is not the time.
When Demi Vollering crashed on stage 5, yellow jersey on her shoulders, Kasia Niewiadoma didn’t know that her chief rival in the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift overall had hit the ground; all she knew was that the race was coming to a close soon and she wanted to win.
“I didn’t see her crash, I thought it split on the descent because it would happen many times leading into the final,” Niewiadoma said after the race. “At that moment racing instinct kicked in and we just wanted to make it to the final. We knew that the final was working well with me; our main goal was to win the stage and then we learned about everything that happened.”
Among the unwritten rules of bike racing, of which there are many, is an agreement that should the leader of the race crash their opponents will not try to take advantage of their misfortune. But this unwritten rule only applies to situations where the racing is calm, the crash is poor luck, and the stakes are low at that moment.
Stage 5 of the Tour de France Femmes was hectic all day. Predicted to perhaps be a reduced bunch sprint, or maybe even go to a long breakaway, the stage instead turned into a GC day, with the yellow jersey changing hands and time gaps forming between the favourites.
A rider never wants to gain the lead because an opponent crashed at a bad moment, but sometimes that is how the race goes.
“It was a very hard stage actually,” Niewiadoma said. “It was never super flat, we never had big mountains but it was rolling terrain with a bunch of attacks at the beginning of the race, everyone wanted to get in a break. It was a challenging day. Mentally it was a hard stage.”
“In the end, we knew it was hectic coming into the final so our goal was to stay in the front in the last 10 km to avoid any problems and I was super happy to have Soraya [Paladin] and Chloe [Dygert] nearby in the top five or six [riders]. That saved us from the crash.”
It wasn’t until after Niewiadoma crossed the line that she found out Vollering had crashed and lost time – heaps of it, in fact, and dropped to ninth overall, 1:19 behind Niewiadoma.
“It’s not something that we celebrate or something that we’re proud of, but it’s also part of racing, unfortunately,” Niewiadoma said. The Canyon-SRAM rider found Vollering at the finish, not to apologise for taking yellow, but to find out if her rival was okay.
“I wanted to check up on her, make sure she was ok. Crashes are not a part of racing we like but they are a part of racing and I think we are all very loyal towards each other. We all have the same goal fighting for the victories but it’s nothing you wish on your opponent.”
While it didn’t happen when or how she had planned, wearing yellow has been Niewiadoma’s main goal for the summer. She’d been training for months for this moment but had thought the battle would be in the high mountains. Her team has been behind her since she joined Canyon-SRAM in 2018, and she is set to stay with them through 2026.
“I am really surprised to take the yellow jersey, but this is what we are coming here for,” said Canyon-SRAM sports director Adam Szabó. “We came here with GC ambitions and to win this Tour de France, and now we have the yellow jersey three days before the finish so I think we will work hard and we will make everything in our strength to defend it.”
“Obviously, Kasia is in good form and we have a strong team behind her and it’s a clear goal from the beginning, from stage 1, that our number-one priority is to get the yellow jersey. Since we have it the tactical world will not change so much. I think we will race as we race until now. But it motivates everyone in the team to have the yellow jersey in the Tour de France Femmes.”
Both Canyon-SRAM and Niewiadoma have grown in maturity and ability of the past two seasons. The team formed from the ashes of Specialized-Lululemon and HTC-Highroad, and at first they looked like they would become a top team, but over the seasons they started to lose out to bigger budget programs like Lidl-Trek.
In 2023 they found their feet again. First, Chloe Dygert won a stage of RideLondon Classique, the team’s first WorldTour victory since Lisa Klein won the time trial at the Simac Ladies Tour in 2019. And the team really hit paydirt with the signings of young German talents Antonia Niedermaier and Ricarda Bauerfeind. Niedermaier won a stage of the Giro d’Italia Women, and Bauerfeind a stage of the Tour.
Niewiadoma in particular came into this season a new woman. Her near miss at the Tour de France Femmes in 2023 also proved to the Polish rider that she could do it, she could win the Tour. Now, five stages into the 2024 Tour, all her hard work over the years, all the attacks that didn’t work and the losses she felt deep in her chest, the support of her team and the hours on the bike have put Niewiadoma in the most iconic jersey in cycling.
“Today she did not have any bad luck,” said Canyon-SRAM team manager Ronny Lauke. “I hope she can enjoy that yellow jersey. We will try to keep it as long as possible on her shoulders. Three more days to go and we will fight for it. It will be a really hard fight and I’m looking forward to that one.”
To say that Niewiadoma only wears the yellow jersey because of Vollering’s crash is to diminish the years and years of hard work, mentally and physically, that Niewiadoma has given to the sport. And yes, had Vollering not crashed, Niewiadoma would not be in yellow, but as she said, crashes are part of racing. Niewiadoma had better luck on the day, she was well placed for that corner, and she is now leading the race.
The Polish rider is also confident that the time Vollering lost on the stage will not determine the overall.
“1:19 in the mountains is nothing, to be honest, but I also know that I spent quite a lot of time preparing for those two final stages so I feel like starting in Rotterdam I was just waiting until we finally got to the mountains,” Niewiadoma said.
“I feel confident knowing I put a lot of effort and work into improving my long climbing skills, but also I am aware of the fact that Demi is extremely strong and equally she was working on the same things so I feel like it’s a fair battle.”
If Vollering is healthy enough post-crash, the battle is still on. The mountains are looming, and on paper, Vollering can still take this. She’s the best climber in the peloton right now, the winner of the Vuelta España Femenina and the Tour de Suisse and the defending champion. But Niewiadoma is firmly in the conversation now as the potential successor to Vollering.
“To be honest, I feel like I don’t have enough time to actually let everything soak in, but it’s definitely a great day for the team, for the sponsors and everyone who put hard effort into preparing me for this race,” Niewiadoma said of wearing the yellow jersey.
“I am looking forward to the race being in the mountains. The peloton will be smaller so less hectic and I think that’s what the whole tour is about, the climbing stages. It will be interesting to us to see how everyone prepared over the months.”
Niewiadoma would have preferred to take yellow from Demi on the climbs this weekend, but the race isn’t over. Vollering still has a chance. For now, Niewiadoma will enjoy wearing the jersey she’s been dreaming about for so long. The jersey she earned not just in her and her team’s performance on the fifth stage, but in the years she has dedicated to this sport.
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