Kim Le Court-Pienaar, the first African leader of the Tour de France Femmes, is back in the yellow jersey and with a stage win to boot – but only just.
The Mauritian led home an elite group of seven into Guéret on stage 5, taking the race lead back from Marianne Vos and consolidating her status as a GC contender with 16 bonus seconds on the day.
She was the quickest finisher from the group of favourites that emerged on the day’s final climb of Le Maupuy, but almost sat up too early to celebrate her stage win, a triumph that took her 18 seconds clear in the overall standings.
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A fast-finishing, and seemingly back-to-full-strength, Demi Vollering jumped out of Le Court-Pienaar’s wheel in the dying metres of the 165.8km stage, coming up alongside her and almost pipping her at the line.
29-year-old Le Court-Pienaar was quickly confirmed as the winner, but even so, she vowed not to repeat her mistake.
“It was really close. But when I turned around, I had the feeling that it was in the bag, so I’m glad for my sake that I didn’t embarrass myself,” she said in the post-race press conference.
“I’m just happy that I won, and that’s all that matters. Close or not close, I still crossed the line first, but next time I’ll just keep on sprinting to the line for sure, so I don’t give my husband a heart attack.”
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Le Court-Pienaar now leads Pauline Ferrand-Prévot by 18 seconds, while a gaggle of other contenders – including Vollering and Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney – remain within 30 seconds of the race lead.
With the big mountains still lying later in the week, she hasn’t quite usurped some of her rivals as the top favourite to win the Tour yet. But whatever happens when the race hits the heights of the Col du Granier, the Col de la Madeleine, and the Col de Joux-Plane, Le Court-Pienaar is just going to enjoy her time in yellow.
“Having it on my shoulders is already a dream come true,” she said. “I was living like it wouldn’t happen again, and now it’s happening again. It’s really amazing, and I’m going to try and go as long as possible.
“We’re going into the mountains now, but I don’t know how I’ll do against the pure climbers. We’re just going to take it day by day and just enjoy these moments.”
In addition to fighting her ever-decreasing list of rivals and the ever-more challenging terrain, Le Court-Pienaar also had another difficulty to contend with on the road to Guéret on Wednesday: her period.
“I actually wasn’t feeling too good today. It’s that time of month for me, so my body was just more tired than usual. That’s just what women have to go through, and I just had to fight through it and with the teamwork that my team did, I just couldn’t give up.”
Kim Le Court and AG Insurance-Soudal celebrate at the end of stage 5 at the Tour de France Femmes (Image credit: Getty Images)
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