The former winner settled for second in the end, but only after delivering perhaps the finest Tour performance of her career.
Cor Vos
Two days after she stormed into the yellow jersey on the legendary Mont Ventoux, Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney (Canyon-SRAM) had to settle for the second step of the Tour de France Femmes podium when all was said and done. Archrival Demi Vollering (FDJ United-Suez), who clawed her way back into the race lead on Saturday, won again on the ninth and final stage to secure the overall victory on Sunday.
The final result marked Niewiadoma-Phinney’s fifth straight Tour podium, but also her fourth time missing out on the top step. But Niewiadoma-Phinney could hold her head high as she celebrated runner-up honors on the Promenade des Anglais. Her Tour may have ended in defeat, but this may have been the best we have ever seen her – even accounting for the year she won the whole thing in 2024.
“I think that I felt stronger than in any other editions,” she acknowledged after the final stage, where she finished third behind UAE Team L’IMAD’s Paula Blasi at 1:04 down on Vollering.
“I felt like I was part of making the race maybe more interesting.”
That was undoubtedly true for a Tour that proved to be an absolute thriller down to the wire, and it all left Niewiadoma-Phinney unmistakably upbeat after the race. That marked a shift in the vibe from what we saw after stage 8, where she accused Vollering’s FDJ United-Suez teammate Celia Géry of forcing her to stop pedaling by taking an aggressive line at a critical corner just as Vollering was surging clear. The conversation around the incident dominated the headlines overnight but it no longer seemed to dominate Niewiadoma-Phinney’s own thoughts as of Sunday evening.
Despite having been dropped by Vollering on the final ascent of the Col d’Eze, despite “only” taking second overall, Niewiadoma-Phinney ended this Tour in high spirits, and it’s not hard to understand why.
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