{"id":841015,"date":"2026-08-01T20:07:11","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T20:07:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/841015\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T20:07:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T20:07:11","slug":"wiebes-outsprints-le-court-and-vollering-to-win-tour-de-france-femmes-opening-stage-tour-de-france-femmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/841015\/","title":{"rendered":"Wiebes outsprints Le Court and Vollering to win Tour de France Femmes opening stage | Tour de France Femmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lorena Wiebes took the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes<\/a> after climbing the C\u00f4te Saint-Fran\u00e7ois and outsprinting race favourites Kim Le Court and 2023 champion, Demi Vollering.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe team worked super hard today,\u201d Wiebes said. \u201cWhen Demi attacked, I knew I had to follow. It was a long sprint, but I\u2019m super happy.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was the Dutch rider\u2019s sixth stage win in the Tour de France Femmes. The 27-year-old also won the opening stage of the 2026 women\u2019s Giro d\u2019Italia in May but was disqualified because her bike had an illegal weight, an outcome which left her team considering legal action against cycling\u2019s governing body, the UCI.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m really happy with the support I have had from the team and the staff,\u201d she said. \u201cThey fully believed in me, when even I had some doubts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wiebes, of SD Worx-Protime, leads the race overall by four seconds from Le Court and six seconds from Vollering. The defending champion, Pauline Ferrand-Pr\u00e9vot, finished eighth and is 10 seconds behind the race leader.<\/p>\n

The final outcome of the race is likely to be decided by minutes, although Lars Boom, sports director to Vollering, who lost the 2024 race by just four seconds, valued the time gain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s always nice,\u201d Boom said. \u201cYou never know what\u2019s going to happen with wildfires in France, so in the end it\u2019s always better to get seconds than to have to gain seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n

The high temperatures and rolling roads split the field after 83km, on the third category C\u00f4te de Villars-le-Comte, where numerous riders lost contact with the peloton and one of the day\u2019s four breakaways, French rider Oc\u00e9ane Mah\u00e9 of the lowly Ma Petite Entreprise team, took the lead in the Queen of the Mountains classification.<\/p>\n

But with 50km left to race the quartet\u2019s advantage began to dwindle and they were finally swallowed up with 6km remaining, on the lakeside approach to Lausanne\u2019s uphill finish.<\/p>\n

Lorena Wiebes wears the yellow jersey on the podium. Photograph: Denis Balibouse\/Reuters<\/p>\n

Vollering, buoyed by the announcement that Red Bull has become her FDJ United\u2013Suez team\u2019s latest sponsorship partner, led into the final 600m, but Wiebes\u2019 turn of speed was too much for her compatriot, who was surprisingly overtaken by Le Court in the closing metres.<\/p>\n

Wiebes came to the Tour Femmes looking for vindication after the Giro controversy in late May. Her win was wiped out by disqualification after her bike weighed in at slightly under the regulation 6.8kg. Wiebes also lost the pink race leader\u2019s jersey and a bitter dispute ensued between the team and the UCI over the methods used to measure the bike\u2019s weight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would have been perfectly fine with it if the scale had consistently shown the same weight,\u201d Wiebes said. \u201cBut having the bike\u2019s weight vary during the weighing process \u2013 that was the most frustrating part for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her SD Worx-Protime team manager, Danny Stam, said that a legal case against the UCI was now pending.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur team\u2019s lawyers are working on it,\u201d he told De Telegraaf. \u201cWe\u2019ve received feedback but it\u2019s going to be a long process. Still, justice needs to be served.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just find it unacceptable that a decision with such a huge impact on a rider is made when a bike is hanging from a tent that\u2019s nearly blowing away. Can\u2019t we operate a bit more professionally in this day and age? Can\u2019t we just weigh a bike inside an enclosed truck, away from the wind? Instead of: \u2018Now it weighs this, now it weighs that.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Tomorrow\u2019s second stage begins in nearby Aigle, ironically on the doorstep of the UCI headquarters, where Wiebes will take to the start line in the yellow jersey. Five more climbs and high temperatures may make it another tough stage, but the flat finish on Geneva\u2019s Quai du Mont-Blanc looks well-suited to the Dutch rider.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lorena Wiebes took the first yellow jersey of the 2026 Tour de France Femmes after climbing the C\u00f4te…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-841015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}