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The eighth stage of the Tour de France Femmes avec Zwift wasn’t supposed to be a general classification day. On paper, the stage had one of the lowest elevation metres of all eight road stages. It was also the longest stage, and if FDJ United-Suez had other plans, it could have been another stage win for Kim Le Court-Pienaar, or even a fairytale victory for Lotte Kopecky.
Instead, 400 metres of road turned a glorified transfer stage into another general classification shake-up, with Demi Vollering attacking on an uncategorized kicker 6.4 km from the finish, riding solo to the line in Nice, and pulling the yellow jersey off the shoulders of Kasia Niewiadoma-Phinney.
In hindsight, it was around 80 km to go when something started to seem fishy with the French team. They were on the front of the peloton, helping sprinters’ teams to close the more-than-five-minute advantage to Loes Adegeest (Lidl-Trek) and Maeva Squiban (UAE Team L’IMAD) out front. After she tried to go for the sixth stage, one could assume that they were setting up their youngster for a late-stage attack on one of the short categorised climbs. Célia Gery has been an incredibly valuable member of the team this season, and as the French champion, it would be magical for her to get a win at the Tour.
It wasn’t until 10 km to go that things started to get serious.
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