The fourth edition of the Tour de France Femmes drew to a conclusion on Sunday in Châtel, the race crowning a home winner for the first time in Pauline Ferrand-Prévot as she won her second stage in a row.
The Frenchwoman’s victory, coming in front of huge crowds of French fans, rounded out a thrilling nine days of racing across France, from Brittany through the Loire Valley and Massif Central into the high mountains of the Alps.
At nine days and 1,168km, the 2025 race was the longest edition yet of the Tour de France Femmes, giving us plenty to talk about as the race wound its way east.
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There were sprint showdowns and a war of words among team staff, big breakthroughs and history makers, while all long, the GC battle simmered before exploding into life on the final weekend.
We’ve covered all nine days of the race in depth from start to finish, with our reporters on the ground, Dani Ostanek and Simone Giuliani, reporting all the angles during the past fortnight. Who better, then, to give us their nine conclusions from the 2025 Tour de France Femmes?
A Grand Départ to remember in Brittany
Breton crowds greet the peloton during the Tour’s Grand Départ in Vannes, Brittany (Image credit: Szymon Gruchalski/Getty Images)
The Grand Départ of this year’s Tour de France Femmes was a special one, visiting Brittany – a heartland of French cycling – for the first time after eight editions of the men’s race had kicked off in the region.
Brittany didn’t disappoint, either, as fans packed the roadsides of the first two stages and the start and finish towns of Vannes, Plumelec, Brest, Quimper, and La Gacilly, waving countless Breton flags as the Tour passed through.
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Nine local riders started the Tour; each being cheered on by their own fan clubs at the roadside as several of them went on the attack during the two opening days.
The racing wasn’t bad either, with the hills of Brittany providing perfect launchpads for riders keen to start their races aggressively. A tactical masterclass by Visma-Lease A Bike saw Marianne Vos triumph on the Côte de Cadoudal, while stage 2 brought more attacking racing into Quimper – concluding with a duck broken and a historical yellow jersey (more on those below).
Stage 3 kicked off in the pretty village of La Gacilly before the race headed west out of the region and on to the sprint days. The action kept coming, but the Tour wasn’t quite the same afterwards. (DO)
Safety and respect – Banding together for change or the blame game?
Demi Vollering is helped across the line by her FDJ-Suez teammates following her late crash on stage 3 (Image credit: Getty Images)
The theme of unity washed over the opening of the Tour de France Femmes with the purple ribbons of the Cyclists Alliance solidarity campaign popping up through the peloton, though in the team buses, there was some less than harmonious talk.
A clearly frustrated FDJ-Suez manager, Stephen Delcourt, spoke of the loss of respect in both men’s and women’s cycling, referring to teams trying to get to the front and cutting the line. Then the response came from Visma-Lease A Bike with sports director Jos van Emden saying, “Yes, she is the best cyclist, but that doesn’t mean everyone should make way for her.”
There was also a sense among some of the sports directors from outside the teams of the very top favourites that while they were there to race and try and chase results too, the sentiment expressed seemed to imply that they didn’t have a place up the front chasing results.
“I don’t like bullies”, was the reaction of one.
Still, the waters seemed to calm a little after the initial flurry of disquiet., with the battles playing out on the road rather than at the team buses. As Cyclists Alliance President Grace Brown said, for there to be a resolution, “everyone has to come together and agree to change the way the behaviour is going.” (SG)
Lorena Wiebes, untouchable in the sprints
Lorena Wiebes showed that she’s by far the fastest sprinter in the world (Image credit: Getty Images)
Marianne Vos may have triumphed on the opening day, a challenging hilly run to Plumelec, but on the flatlands of the Loire and the Vienne, even the all-time great couldn’t add to her astounding tally of 258 career victories.
Instead, it was another Dutchwoman who proved unbeatable on the road to Angers and Poitiers – a rider already recognised as the best sprinter in the world, Lorena Wiebes.
The European champion missed out on a victory at last year’s Tour, which started on home ground in the Netherlands, but she wouldn’t be denied here. She already had 14 wins in 2025, including Milan-San Remo and Gent-Wevelgem, and nobody could stop her from taking numbers 15 and 16.
SD Worx-Protime had come into the race aiming for stage wins, a goal nobody quite knew whether to believe, but one they’d pivot to in any case following Lotte Kopecky’s early time losses. With Wiebes on board, sprinting to the win by some distance on stage 3 and freestyling on stage 4, they easily achieved what they set out to do, taking home the green jersey to boot.
Even Vos was in awe of Wiebes, saying after finishing second to her twice in a row: “I don’t think I have seen a sprinter like her before – not in the 20 years I’ve been sprinting.” (DO)
Breaking the drought at Liv-Jayco-AlUla
Mavi García scored Liv-AlUla-Jayco’s first win of 2025 in Quimper (Image credit: Getty Images)
Liv-AlUla-Jayco had never won a stage at the Tour de France Femmes prior to the 2025 edition, but that all changed with Mavi García’s solo victory on stage 2.
“There was elation, I think, a bit of relief as well,” Jayco-AlUla women’s team manager and sports director Gene Bates told Cyclingnews. “To get a success so early in the Tour de France is always nice. The vibe is in a lot different people can race more relaxed, happy that we’ve ticked off a big goal of ours already.”
It was also the team’s first win of the season, with the victory arriving not, said Bates, because of any change to their way of approaching the racing, the opposite in fact.
“We approach every race very similarly. We want to be aggressive. We want to be part of the racing and have good numbers with our riders,” said Bates.” And I think we have a great squad to do that; it just hasn’t come off.
“We’ve had a lot of near misses already this season,” he said. “So I think the girls are doing a really good job of following through on processes, and we know it was just a matter of time before it happened.”
The timing of course couldn’t have been better, and even with just one win the teams season all of a sudden looks much healthier because of the scale of that victory. Now they just need the momentum to keep rolling. (SG)
Le Court making history
Kim Le Court-Pienaar became the first African rider to win a stage and wear yellow (Image credit: Getty Images)
In the men’s Tour de France, African riders have broken through with stage wins (Biniam Girmay) and spells in the yellow jersey (Daryl Impey). This year, Mauritian race Kim Le Court-Pienaar did both – two firsts in a matter of days.
Her rise has been rapid, having only signed with AG Insurance-Soudal at the start of last year after a spell racing without a pro team
Last summer, she finished off the Giro d’Italia Women with a stage win, while this spring she was a Classics revelation, racking up top five placings at Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders and winning Liège-Bastogne-Liège. Now, in her late 20s, she’s firmly placed herself among the big stars of the sport.
Le Court-Pienaar held yellow until the brutal climb of the Madeleine, then switched to support teammate Sarah Gigante as she fought for the podium.
“Oh my gosh, to have the yellow jersey sacrifice herself for me, that’s next level. That’s the kind of stuff that gives you goosebumps,” said Gigante of Le Court-Pienaar, one of the new superstars made at this year’s Tour. (DO)
Squiban supremacy
Maëva Squiban became a new star of French cycling with two solo stage wins (Image credit: Getty Images)
Even after Maëva Squiban picked up the day’s combativity award on stage 2 of the Tour, which departed from her hometown of Brest, few would’ve predicted that the 23-year-old would end the race a double stage winner and a new star in French cycling.
Squiban, racing for a decimated UAE Team ADQ squad, had finished second in La Grand-Bornard last July, but she went one better on stage 6 this year through the Massif Central.
A 32km solo ride to Ambert saw her score the biggest win of her career, and she’d stunningly repeat the feat the next day, into Chambéry. Having joked with her team that she’d attack from kilometre zero, she ended up doing just that, racing in the break from the start of the stage and going clear over the Col du Granier.
Always on the search for their next homegrown Tour winner, French media were quick to ask whether she’d fit the bill. Squiban responded by telling them she loves attacking too much to sit with the GC riders. And in any case, they’d only have to wait a few more days for their dreams to be fulfilled.
Meanwhile, UAE Team ADQ, who had lost team leader Elisa Longo Borghini to illness earlier in the race, ended it among the most successful teams. Along with Squiban’s stage wins and her supercombativity award, Dominika Włodarczyk flew in the high mountains to leap from 11th overall to a final position of fourth. (DO)
Monumental Madeleine
Riders ascend the 19km climb of the Col de la Madeleine, the pivotal climb of this year’s race (Image credit: Getty Images)
As the riders got set at the team buses ahead of stage 8, with waves of rain falling on Chambéry, there was a friction in the air that suited the gravity of the stage.
This was the day that would smash the GC wide open. The course wasn’t easy before the finishing climb, with first- and second-category climbs during the earlier stages, but the favourites were holding fire for the Col de la Madeleine, with good reason.
The race has had some spectacular crowning climbs, from La Super Planche des Belles Filles and the Col du Tourmalet to L’Alpe d’Huez, but this year’s packed an extra punch as the longest yet, 18.6km at 8.1% awaited. What’s more, it delivered on its promise.
It may not have been the most well-known of the climbs that frequent the Tour de France, but it will be a day at the women’s race that will be hard to forget. In fact, with Pauline Ferrand-Prévot rising to the top on the Madeleine, the mystique of the mountain has just got so much bigger for the French fans. The Tour de France Femmes is making some legends of its own. (SG)
Regrets, some teams may have had a few, after the Madeleine
Sarah Gigante’s climbing performances may have given her former team Movistar, something to regret (Image credit: Getty Images)
There have been so many switches among the very top riders in the peloton this season, but also just below that top tier. After this Tour de France Femmes, there may well be a few teams that are kicking themselves for not fighting harder to keep specific names.
In fact, the top 3 on the Col de la Madeleine were recent movers, and opportunities lost, for the teams that didn’t manage to keep them.
Third-placed Niamh Fisher-Black, who left SD Worx-Protime and moved to Lidl-Trek at the start of this season, cleverly found a place in the break and launched from there. The team which once dominated the standings could certainly have done with some extra firepower on the climbs.
Second and kicking off the GC action was Sarah Gigante, a rider that Movistar let slip away at the start of 2024, ending her contract early to go to AG Insurance-Soudal. After adding that to her Giro performance, where she won two stages, she is now considered one of the best climbers in the peloton.
Then there was the winner, Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, who walked away from mountain biking and Ineos Grenadiers at the end of 2024. The British team missed the opportunity to build a women’s road team around the French rider, and thus walked away from a Tour de France Femmes winner. (SG)
Delight and surprise at domination of Ferrand-Prévot
Pauline Ferrand-Prévot, the first French rider to win the Tour since the 1980s (Image credit: Getty Images)
France had been waiting almost 40 years for a Tour de France winner before Pauline Ferrand-Prévot came along. The 33-year-old returned to the road this season, having racked up world and Olympic titles in mountain bike, cyclocross, and gravel since she last completed a full road season back in 2018.
After joining Visma-Lease A Bike following a brief spell at Ineos Grenadiers, she began racking up the big results almost immediately with podiums at Strade Bianche and the Tour of Flanders, followed by a 19km solo win on home ground at Paris-Roubaix.
This summer, attention switched to July and her debut at the race. She started in Vannes among the favourites, but few would have predicted exactly how dominant she ended up being, with a stunning solo ride to the top of the Madeleine unmatched by her GC rivals.
In Châtel, she rounded out her race with another stage win, a celebration in yellow to cement her triumph – one that came well ahead of schedule.
“It’s a little girl’s dream that’s coming true today,” Ferrand-Prévot said in the post-stage press conference. “I gave myself three years to try and win the Tour de France. It was a challenge, really, a challenge to see if I could do it.”
She did it, and in some style too. As L’Equipe’s headline read on Saturday, France had found their new ‘Reine’ of Le Tour. (DO)
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