After an incredible day up Mont Ventoux, the Tour de France Femmes heads south to Nice. On Saturday the women set out for the longest stage of the Tour, a 176.4-km ride from Sisteron. But it\u2019s anything but a straightforward sprint stage.<\/p>\n
The race book calls it a flat stage, but the road into Nice tells a different story.<\/p>\n
Stage 8 of the Tour de France Femmes<\/p>\n
The opening half of the stage features plenty of gradual climbing before the riders tackle the Col des Robines and Col de Toutes Aures. Neither climb is that nasty, but the constant uphill terrain could start to wear down the pure sprinters. Lorena Wiebes has said she\u2019s been working on her climbing\u2013which certainly helped early in the TdFF when she survived some of the lumps to take two dubs.<\/p>\n
If sprinters can handle that, the road trends downhill for a long stretch toward the Mediterranean before the finale delivers its biggest challenge.<\/p>\n
The Col de Colomars and Col de la Ginesti\u00e8re come late enough to cause serious damage. The Ginesti\u00e8re is 2.5 km at 4.4 per cent, and while that may not sound too too bad, its position just 20ish kilometres from the finish makes it a key point in the race.<\/p>\n
The tough finale<\/p>\n
Then comes an even nastier surprise. After a descent, the peloton faces a tough little 450-m ramp averaging 13.8 per cent. It is short, sure, but an attack or two from some punchy riders could totally mess up the peloton. So it still might be a sprint, but in a reduced bunch.<\/p>\n
But after that, the women descend toward Nice and hit the familiar Promenade des Anglais for the final three kilometres.<\/p>\n
It might be another chance for Victoria\u2019s Sarah Van Dam. The Visma-Lease a Bike rider took fourth from the break in Stage 6, but said she messed up her sprint and thought she could have won. It\u2019s definitely a day that suits her\u2013she can climb and spring from smaller groups like a champ.<\/p>\n
The Tour de France Femmes wraps up Sunday with a tough ride around Nice. It\u2019s hard to say if Demi Vollering will try and make a move today on maillot jaune Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney<\/a>. Tomorrow might be better, but it\u2019s still going to be tough, seeing how well the Pole rode on Friday. Flobikes<\/a> has the broadcast beginning at 9:45 a.m. EDT.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After an incredible day up Mont Ventoux, the Tour de France Femmes heads south to Nice. On Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":833516,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[112150,49,48,635,19488,295869,48387,82],"class_list":["post-850614","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cycling","tag-2026-tour-de-france","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cycling","tag-demi-vollering","tag-kasia-niewiadoma-phinney","tag-sarah-van-dam","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850614","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=850614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/833516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}