{"id":841105,"date":"2026-08-01T21:09:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T21:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/841105\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T21:09:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T21:09:40","slug":"with-the-parcours-i-want-to-race-more-to-my-strengths-niamh-fisher-black-adjusts-expectations-for-tour-de-france-femmes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/841105\/","title":{"rendered":"‘With the parcours, I want to race more to my strengths’ \u2013 Niamh Fisher-Black adjusts expectations for Tour de France Femmes"},"content":{"rendered":"

A year on from finishing fifth overall to add to her haul of Grand Tour top-10s, Niamh Fisher-Black<\/a> (Lidl-Trek) is expecting, or even hoping, to replicate that performance<\/a> at this year’s Tour de France Femmes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, the New Zealand rider has been forced to adjust and temper her ambitions going into this year’s edition, with the course “taking away from the general classification” for a rider of Fisher-Black’s abilities.<\/p>\n

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A lightweight climber, Fisher-Black has excelled in climb-heavy Grand Tours before, with top-10s in the Giro d’Italia Women, Vuelta Femenina and Tour in the last two years. But whilst this year’s Tour route is headlined by Mont Ventoux,<\/a> there are plenty of hilly, punchy stages too, and a time trial that looks to be Fisher-Black’s biggest hurdle to a solid GC assault.<\/p>\n

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“I think I go into this race with maybe slightly different goals from previous stage races,” she explained to Cyclingnews on Friday.<\/p>\n

“Just the way the parcours is, I want to race a little bit more to my strengths, and that’s maybe taken away from the general clarification a little bit. And I think with the team we have here, it’s about searching [for a stage win] as well. So we’re optimistic about the week ahead, but I hope to maybe approach it a little bit differently.”<\/p>\n

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“It’s mainly just the time trial. It’s not a strength of mine and I know that.” she answered when asked where the specific challenges lay for her, though she was realistic that the race won’t only be won or lost on that day.<\/p>\n

“The thing is with the parcours that we have in the Tour de France this year, the time is probably not going to be made on the time trial day; it will be in the last few days. So I am still looking. It’s a very open race and a lot can happen, so we’re pretty optimistic about it.”<\/p>\n

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Even if the course is not ideal, Fisher-Black has proven that her GC potential is very much still there this year, riding to fifth overall in the Giro d’Italia Women<\/a> despite not having her best week, and going on the attack on the final stage.<\/p>\n

“In the end, it finished nicely, but it was honestly not my best week on the bike,” she explained. “I was struggling with some issues, so I have taken quite a bit of time now to work on it, and hopefully we can come back this week a bit better. It’s been a long period, but it’s nice to sort of reset and build back up again.”<\/p>\n

The positive thing may be that instead of Lidl-Trek pinning their main hopes on a GC campaign for Fisher-Black, they’re coming to this race with a strong line-up of stage-hunters, including Lucinda Brand and Elisa Balsamo, plus future GC contender Isabella Holmgren.<\/p>\n

To win a stage would likely be more rewarding than a 5th to 10th finish on GC.<\/p>\n

“A stage win [at this race] still evades us as a team and also myself, so for sure that’s a big goal,” Fisher-Black said. “I would definitely be happy coming out of the week with that.”<\/p>\n

Support our unrivalled coverage of the Tour de France Femmes and women’s cycling by subscribing to Cyclingnews. In return, you get unlimited access to high-quality journalism, with breaking news, race analysis, and expert insight from inside the women’s peloton. Plus, the Cyclingnews app lets you follow the action wherever you go! Join today.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A year on from finishing fifth overall to add to her haul of Grand Tour top-10s, Niamh Fisher-Black…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":841106,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[49,48,635,82],"class_list":["post-841105","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\/841105","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=841105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/841106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}