{"id":42661,"date":"2025-08-04T11:01:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-04T11:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/42661\/"},"modified":"2025-08-04T11:01:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-04T11:01:07","slug":"a-few-pedal-strokes-separated-me-from-pauline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/42661\/","title":{"rendered":"A few pedal strokes separated me from Pauline"},"content":{"rendered":"

The only rider who seemed capable of keeping up with Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot in the final stage of the Tour de France Femmes<\/a> was Niamh Fisher-Black. The rider from Lidl-Trek<\/a> came within a few meters of the yellow jersey, but was unable to close the gap. Her fourth place in the stage earned the New Zealander a top 5 spot in the GC.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was fast from the start,\u201d Fisher-Black said, looking back on the final stage with IDLProCycling.com, among others. \u201cEarly on, it was just the women in the GC. I had to stay on the pedals all day, but to be honest, I like races like this. And I felt good, even though it was tough.\u201d<\/p>\n

This allowed the 24-year-old rider to stay with the women competing for the overall victory, such as Vollering (FDJ-Suez), Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot (Visma | Lease a Bike), and Niewiadoma (Canyon\/\/SRAM). \u201cIn the final, I knew it was going to be tough.\u201d Behind these four top riders in women’s cycling<\/a>, Fisher-Black finished fourth.Yet on the final climb, she looked like the second-best rider in the race. Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot made her decisive attack<\/a> there and rode solo to the stage win. \u201cTo be honest, I was a few pedal strokes away from being able to follow Pauline. But she was too strong,\u201d Fisher-Black concluded after the race. While the woman in the yellow jersey attacked from behind before the corner, Fisher-Black had to react from the front. After the corner, she closed to within a few meters of the Visma | Lease a Bike rider, but after Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot pushed hard one last time, Fisher-Black broke away.<\/p>\n

Read more below the images.<\/p>\n

Fisher-Black hadn’t expected to finish fifth in the GC<\/p>\n

Fisher-Black then battled for the remaining podium places, which went to Vollering (second) and Niewiadoma (third). \u201cIt was a good day because I was able to move up to fifth place in the GC.\u201d And the rider hadn’t expected that. \u201cNo, definitely not. Before the start of this race, I had high ambitions, not necessarily for the GC, but to see what I could do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fisher-Black’s ambitions remained unchanged during the Tour de France Femmes, which made a top 5 place in the GC a surprise. \u201cI just had some unlucky moments and maybe not the best legs for a few days, so actually a few days ago I didn’t think I would finish fifth in the GC today.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The only rider who seemed capable of keeping up with Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot in the final stage of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42662,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":["post-42661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42661","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42661"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42661\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42662"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42661"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42661"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42661"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}