Kasia Niewiadoma (Canyon-SRAM) survived a late scare from stage 6 winner Cédrine Kerbaol (Cerataizit-WNT) and held onto the yellow jersey heading into the final two days of the Tour de France Femmes, where the race will be decided.
For Niewiadoma, it was a day all about staying safe and ensuring she kept her lead as a decisive duo of summit finishes nears, but Kerbaol’s late attack 14.6km from the line saw her lead get as big as 40 seconds, which would have put her into the maillot jaune.
However, with teammate Neve Bradbury pulling and FDJ-Suez also committing riders, they were able to reduce the winning margin to just 21 seconds and the Polish rider kept control of the race lead.
“We were not stressing too much about it. We had Neve [Bradbury] who was pulling together with FDJ so I knew that when we came closer to the finish line, teams would be engaged in setting a harder pace, so in the end, it all ended up well for us,” said Niewiadoma in her post-race press conference.
While it was expected that Canyon-SRAM might work to try and expose any form missing for Demi Vollering (SD Worx-Protime), who crashed on stage 5 and lost her jersey to Niewiadoma, the focus was more on stages 7 and 8.
“To be honest, I think the whole peloton is focusing on the last two stages because they are the most crucial ones and the hardest ones,” Niewiadoma explained.
“Today was more like a breakaway day, but definitely getting into the final with all the climbs at the end and Puck [Pieterse] going for mountain points, I felt that there was a little testing in between us."
This testing moment was when at the top of the final climb, the Côte des Fins, Niewiadoma pulled clear in a trio with Pieterse and Vollering, however, they didn’t hold any of their advantages as “none of us were very committed to putting the hammer down”.
While SD Worx confirmed that Vollering had been feeling better en route to Morteau after sustaining mainly superficial injuries in the high-speed crash, Niewiadoma still thought there could be weaknesses in the climbing core of their squad.
“I think of course they have a strong team but in the mountains, as we saw today, Demi was left with only Niamh Fisher-Black so let's see what they plan on doing tomorrow,” said Niewiadoma, echoing some of her pre-race thoughts at the Rotterdam media day.
“Of course, you can never underestimate Demi. She’s a super strong rider and also a very smart rider. We definitely recognise that maybe without Lotte [Kopecky] and without Marlen [Reusser], the team is weakened a little.
"But also they are not there to just watch the race, they are there to win the race. So we are aware of that and we just want to have a pure fight of strength.”
Can Niewiadoma defend the yellow jersey from Vollering and the rest? Le Grand Bornand and Alpe d'Huez will leave no room to hide.
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